


thrill as only we know how

by inmyriadbits, Spatz



Category: Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible (TV), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Beer, Cameos, Dubious Science, Explosions, F/M, Gadgets, Guns, Handcuffs, Heist, Hijinks & Shenanigans, IMF, M/M, Mad Science, Magnets, Manly Hand-Holding, Masks, Mission Fic, Poker, Small Fandom Big Bang, Spies & Secret Agents, Spy-Fi, Team Bonding, Temporary Amnesia, The Great Train Robbery, Truth Serum, Vodka, Workplace Relationship, World Travel, dean martin - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 05:53:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1540037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmyriadbits/pseuds/inmyriadbits, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatz/pseuds/Spatz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their meeting on the pier in Seattle, the team goes their separate ways. But Ghost Protocol left the IMF in turmoil, so Will, Ethan, Jane, and Benji team up to take on the Syndicate, a mysterious and widespread criminal organization. Will has to adjust to being a field agent again, and learn how to work with his team when the world isn’t on the line -- all while dealing with attack cheetahs, unexpected amnesia, train robbery, master thieves, and more.</p><p>Falling in love was <i>not</i> part of his scenario.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. change my lonely life

**Author's Note:**

> We would like to give a million thanks to ignipes for her wonderful beta, and to doitninetimes for all the cheerleading!
> 
> inmyriadbits would like to thank spatz for being so much fun to co-write with, and for not strangling her in her sleep over the hyphens argument. ♥ spatz would like to thank inmyriadbits for having this awesome idea in the first place, suggesting we write it together -- and then writing all the hard parts. :D
> 
> Make sure to check out Tarlanx's awesome [art post](http://smallfandombang.livejournal.com/94053.html)! She made us not one but **two** different pieces, available as cover art and wallpapers! You can also find them via the related work link below or [here](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sfbb03/works/1387153).

After Seattle, Will chose to accept his mission.

The job was good for easing Will out of the shell-shock of Ethan's revelation: a minor but tricky scientist recruitment, a solo excursion requiring in-depth research, total absorption in the target’s psychology, and the formation of long-term trust rather than manipulating and discarding. Approaching scientist recruits was a specialty of Will's. His training officer had always claimed that Will's biggest strength in the field was his talent for leading people to underestimate and confide in him. She’d been right, of course; even Ethan Hunt bought Will's harmless-analyst body language and conversation – right up until Will took out two armed men right in front of him. 

Kinda hard to explain that away.

Most of the scientists that Will recruited never saw his field agent side. He showed them his intelligence, his genuine interest in their work, his commitment to the cause, but never his skills with guns, knives, or con artistry.

The mission ran smooth as silk and ahead of schedule, and Will returned to DC. He was pleased to discover that the new Secretary had already approved Will’s recommendation for his replacement as Chief Analyst. Adam Eszes was a good man and Will thought he would do well, but the sooner he started in his new position, the better. 

Will had spent the last month before Seattle sorting out the analysts and helping transition to the new Secretary, but he knew the department was still struggling. He would feel guilty about leaving analysis for field work again, but Will knew he had never been much of an administrator. Adam was far better at managing personnel – had, in fact, been doing most of the heavy lifting there during the transition, to Will’s relief – and he had a brilliant analytical mind. If they’d managed to poach him from the CIA just a few months earlier, Will bet that Adam would’ve been the former Secretary’s choice rather than him.

The Secretary delegated the promotion notification to Will, which he performed with pleasure. Adam didn’t even seem surprised.

“Going back to field work, are you?” Adam asked, looking Will over shrewdly. 

Will smiled. “That obvious?”

“No, not really. But honestly, I would’ve told you to get your ass back out there months ago if you hadn’t so clearly had your own issues going on,” Adam said. “Glad to see you’ve worked out whatever that was.”

“I had some help,” Will admitted. Ethan’s confession had been the key, of course, but before Seattle, he’d spent some time with Benji, and visited Jane during her recovery. Jane in particular had tried to convince him to get back to field work – and at the very least, talk to Ethan about Croatia. He’d put her off by talking about his responsibilities as Chief Analyst, but her persistence had planted the seed. Jane and Benji were both out of the country on missions now, but he was looking forward to sharing the news. 

“Good,” Adam said. “Now get out of here and take a few hours before they find another mission to send you on.” 

Will held up his hands in surrender. “Aye-aye, Chief,” he said, and made a quick exit.

With his responsibilities passed on, Will suddenly had a lot of free time on his hands; he eventually ran out of excuses.

It was a warm day. The air hung humid and heavy with sun and the smell of cut grass as Will walked across the grass of the cemetery, toward the former Secretary’s grave. He couldn’t help contrasting it to that last night in Moscow; the smell of blood and the cold sharpness of air and water were as different as could be from this warm, quiet place.

He found the plot with ease, and stood for a long time, silently looking at the headstone. Will had never been the type to talk to the dead, and he didn’t plan to start today – especially not here. He hadn’t brought any equipment to sweep for bugs.

"I hear they went with car accident for the cover-up," said a voice from behind him. 

Will startled, and turned to find Ethan Hunt standing a careful, non-threatening distance away. _Huh,_ Will thought. _Back from Paris already_. He silently raised an eyebrow at him; Ethan should know better than to talk about classified information at a public official’s gravesite. 

“Don’t worry, I checked for surveillance already,” Ethan said, and it was sort of creepy that he knew what Will was thinking.

Will considered asking Ethan what he was doing there, but discarded the idea immediately; he had the feeling Ethan would just deflect. After a long moment, Will said, "Car accident’s very traditional for the CIA. 'And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.'"

"I hope so," Ethan said, somewhat cryptically. Before Will could ask, he moved on, gesturing to the flowers Will held. "Roses? Interesting choice. I would have guessed calla lilies."

Will wondered if Ethan always lived that way, trying to keep one step ahead of the people around him even off-mission – not just observing actions, but predicting and deconstructing choices. He bet Ethan didn't even notice himself doing it anymore.

"Normally, you'd be right," Will admitted. "He gets roses because he would've liked the pun."

Ethan shot him a curious look. "Pun?"

"With these on his grave, he'll be literally _sub rosa_." The Secretary would have laughed. 

Will didn't mention the other, older meanings of the bouquet – a full rose in bloom over two buds, for secrecy; white, for silence.

"Yeah," Ethan said, lips curving now with amusement. "He always did have an appalling sense of humor."

Will quirked a smile. He fiddled with the flowers, thumbing at the cut-off base of a thorn for a moment before admitting, "When he promoted me, I was really too inexperienced for the position of chief analyst. I think I caught his attention after Croatia. He said he liked that I’d been in the field, that it showed in my analysis. I thought he just liked that I laughed at his jokes.”

“Even the one about the elephant?” Ethan asked, clearly holding back a smile.

“Hey, that one is golden.”

Ethan looked at Will skeptically.

“Just because it’s an analyst in-joke that you can't fully appreciate doesn't mean it's not funny,” Will protested. He really did like the elephant joke.

Ethan lost his straight face at that, breaking into one of the bright grins that Will had first seen in Seattle, a grin he couldn't help returning. It was nothing like the smooth smile he'd used on Moreau, and Will preferred it to the serious focus with which he'd executed most of the Hendricks affair.

Ethan had smiled like that in Croatia, Will remembered abruptly, and felt the smile slide off his own face. He looked down at the roses in his hand before he had to see Ethan turn serious again as well, and belatedly bent to place them on the grave.

Still looking away, Will said, "I've been thinking about Croatia, since you told me."

"Brandt–"

"Just – hear me out. I’ve been thinking about the Secretary, about the choices he made." Will paused. "I think he was setting me up to figure it out."

"Huh." Ethan actually sounded surprised at that.

"He'd never break his promise to you not to tell anyone, but... I checked on the timing of a few things, after I got back to headquarters. He ordered the Rankow Prison mission almost an hour before he called me into his office and insisted I fly to Moscow with him." The Secretary had made comments about Will needing sunlight and fresh air; Will had asked him why he expected sunshine in Moscow at that time of year, but hadn't spared much thought to the Secretary’s motivations. "Then after the Kremlin, he deliberately brought me along for your pick-up. He had to know that I would recognize you."

Ethan had a look of concentration now, like he was running through that conversation in his head. Will barreled on.

"The Secretary wasn't a cruel man; he wouldn't have brought me to that meeting without a reason. At first, I thought that he needed a reliable witness for your 'escape,' but his driver was loyal, and I'm sure you would've made it look good. If I hadn't been so distracted by everything that followed, it would have been enough to make me question some things about Croatia."

"He never did do anything that didn't have three or four motives behind it. Wily old bastard," Ethan said, directing this last at the headstone. He paused. "He made the right call, though." 

Will looked over at him. Ethan smiled but didn't elaborate, and then changed the subject again. Will was beginning to notice a pattern, here.

"How's the reorganization going? Eszes is a solid choice."

"You really shouldn't know about that," Will said mildly. The new appointment hadn't been disseminated beyond a handful of people.

"It's my job to find out things I shouldn't know. I have to keep in practice." Ethan’s shit-eating grin said that he enjoyed keeping in practice.

"True," Will said. He rubbed a knuckle thoughtfully across his lips, thinking about the preliminary report from Agent Stickell that he'd seen this morning. It had been an entertaining read, featuring a new and mysterious organization called the Syndicate, a hacked and diverted combat drone, a prominent Parisian landmark, a certain Agent Hunt, and the key phrases 'dangling by his fingertips' and 'death-defying leap.'

All innocence, Will asked, “How was Paris? Did you visit the Eiffel Tower?”

Ethan narrowed his eyes at Will, and Will bit down on a laugh. “You really need to stop almost falling off tall things,” he said. “Hey, maybe your next mission will be somewhere flat.”

Ethan smirked. “It’s funny you should say that.”


	2. bend with me, make me sway

Twenty-four hours and one plane ride later, Amsterdam was not what Will expected.

The mission started familiarly enough: a basic insertion via well-established aliases saw Will neatly through customs, and a rental car got him from the airport to the safe house, where he met the other members of the team.

The rest of the team was _young_. Painfully young. Intellectually, Will knew that the IMF promoted a lot of junior agents to the field in the wake of Ghost Protocol – some of their experienced agents declined to return after the mass disavowal, and some were so deep in new identities that they hadn’t heard about the IMF’s resurrection. Many would return in the next six months, but Will estimated that a good 12% would retire or disappear entirely.

Agent Hughes ran the Amsterdam station, by virtue of her two years of field experience. Her tech ops and communications officer was a tiny, dark-haired man named Snow. Agent Meehan provided operational support and – from what Will could see – coffee-making expertise. 

Hughes was competent – former military, high performance rating – but she was a young team leader, and past experience appeared to have made her hyper-alert for challenges to her authority. She seemed less anxious about Will and more about the anticipated arrival of “Agent Hunt”, judging by her pacing and a few tense comments, but Will kept his interaction deliberately low-key and non-confrontational anyway. Snow hunched up over a gadget, oblivious to the world, while Meehan fidgeted with the impressive coffee setup.

Ethan made his entrance an hour or so later. He was a consummate professional from the second he walked in the door, greeting Will with a short nod and “Agent Brandt,” before turning his attention to the rest of the crew. Will watched, impressed, as the first five seconds of interaction with Hughes evolved Ethan’s behavior into exactly the right mode: respectful of Hughes’ skills and experience with the region, while still maintaining authority as the senior agent – someone whose approval mattered. Meehan, on the other hand, was an easy sell; he needed very little winning-over once he heard Ethan’s name, saying, “I’ve heard all about that mission in East Timor, sir,” cartoon hearts practically in his eyes. (Will had heard about East Timor, too; at least the kid had good taste.) Snow looked up, waved vaguely, and disappeared into his device again.

Ethan took it all in with an air of patience and efficiency, topped with a heavy dose of charm, and Will could feel the room relax. It was strangely unsettling – until Will realized that he was more familiar with the Ethan Hunt who had been blown up with the Kremlin, concussed, shot at, disavowed, dunked in icy water, dangled off the world’s tallest building, dragged across several time zones, and shot at some more. Will also wasn’t staggering under the guilt of getting the man’s wife killed anymore, which changed his perspective a bit. 

Will _knew_ Dubai had been a shitshow, but seeing this other end of the spectrum made it really painfully obvious.

Ethan assembled them for a mission briefing in short order, and outlined the situation. 

Will already knew about the Syndicate drone hijackings in Kandahar and Paris, but the IMF had managed to trace the technology acquired by Ethan in Paris back to a corporation based out of Amsterdam _and_ pinpoint the person responsible in just the few days Will had been out of the loop. That was fast work. Maybe it had been bumped up in priority. Even though Will had repeatedly reported that his analysts weren’t at all sure what the Syndicate was, exactly – just that they had been popping up all over the map lately – the brass seemed convinced that it was a new terrorist organization, and were over-reacting accordingly. 

“The target is Jan Nejem, a cybersecurity expert at the company,” Ethan explained. “Our mission is to cut off the leak by removing Nejem from the equation, and do it in a way that appears unrelated to the drone incidents.”

Will eyed the picture Ethan displayed. He noticed the others were studying the picture intently as well, and Will frowned. Had this station not done the preliminary recon for the analysis? They should already know Nejem’s particulars. His frown deepened as Ethan began to detail the target’s personal information and security details of the building. Apparently, they hadn’t.

“Any accomplices or suppliers?” Will asked, because if the local agents didn’t already know, they needed to.

“None,” Ethan said. Will thought that was somewhat unusual, but Ethan moved on. 

After a moment of thought, Will interrupted again. “How’s he getting the tech out around the security protocols, then?” He couldn’t see a way to pull it off without at least one other person.

“Not sure.” Ethan shrugged. “It’s academic, at this point. Nejem bought a plane ticket to Switzerland two days ago, right after the engineering lab announced its new prototype. His flight leaves in three days – so we’re doing this tonight, before he can get his hands on the prototype or leave the country.”

Well, that explained the speed of the backtrace; they were on the clock here. Will’s curiosity soured into a feeling of unease, and he sat back to think.

This was a typical IMF-style mission: highly specific and difficult, but with far-ranging factors and consequences. The combination of high stakes with the need for pinpoint subtlety was likely what had landed the operation at IMF; the CIA tended to take care of the long-haul espionage work requiring manpower, patience and years of groundwork. IMF got the jobs where there was a short clock, or where there were few options other than to charm, bullshit, out-think, out-crazy, or hail-mary a way to operational success. Their agents were highly competent, and often more than a little insane.

They were also usually impeccably well-informed, and herein lay Will’s problem. 

The thing was, Will used to be Chief Analyst. He had been ordered to keep his silence about the state they were in following Ghost Protocol, along with the rest of the upper management. Most of the lingering issues were being caught in review, but the time-critical missions were, by their nature, subject to less corroboration. Will had made sure to pay more attention to them as a result; luckily, they were more rare, but he’d personally averted at least one potential disaster during the transition by spotting an oversight.

He’d had the same bad feeling then that he had right now.

At an appropriate lull in Ethan’s presentation, Will tried, "It’d be good to acquire more data on the target. A few shifts of surveillance should do it.”

Hughes shook her head. "The best window for the op is this evening, like Ethan said. We can get in and get out: clean, tight, and fast.”

Will rubbed a knuckle across his mouth, and dredged up a smile for Hughes. “Just a thought,” he said, shrugging, and tried to ignore the unsettled feeling. Maybe he was just being too cautious.

Ethan watched this exchange without comment. He turned to resume the briefing, but his phone chimed. Ethan slipped it from his back pocket and gave the screen a slight grimace. “Excuse me, everyone,” he said. The hall door swung shut behind him before anyone could respond. 

The others shifted restlessly in the vacuum of Ethan’s exit. Will started brainstorming for a reason to insist on surveillance without having to go against his orders, but drew a blank; Hughes got up to study the blueprints; Snow drifted back to his gadget. 

Meehan, visibly less than impressed with Will after his interruptions, leaned over. “Man, what are you doing?” Meehan asked, low-voiced. “He’s _Ethan Hunt_. He’s the _best_.”

Will looked at the kid. _He can still be wrong_ , he managed not to say. Meehan turned away, clearly not looking for a reply.

Will didn’t know for certain that Ethan was making the wrong call, but knowing what he did.... He couldn’t help thinking of the last time he’d hesitated to share information with Ethan, prioritizing orders over something as irrational as a bad feeling. 

He had kept his silence, and death, chaos and betrayal had followed.

Will stood casually, and stretched. “There a bathroom around here?” he asked, despite already knowing the answer. 

Hughes waved toward the hall door. “Last one on the left,” she said absently.

“Thanks.”

Will eased the door shut behind him, and found himself at the end of a long hallway lined with windows on one side. The first two doors stood open on empty bedrooms, and the third was the bathroom. Will headed for the far end, which led to a tiny balcony. 

City traffic sounds greeted Will as he stepped outside. Ethan stood at the railing, phone nowhere in sight. 

Will suddenly wondered whether the call had been real at all.

Ethan glanced over as Will shut the door and moved up beside him, but said nothing. Will bit the inside of his cheek for a second, looking down at the street, at the building across. Anywhere but at Ethan.

"Look, I didn’t want to argue with you in front of the–" _kids_ , he thought, "–others, but we're not in a hurry here. We need to run some surveillance.”

“The longer we wait, the more we risk,” Ethan replied.

“The more haste, the more chance we miss our way entirely,” Will shot back. He looked at his hands on the wrought iron railing and took a breath. “The IMF intelligence network is in total disarray. Our briefing may not be as accurate as you’ve come to expect. It may not be accurate at all.” Well, that did it – welcome to the party, unauthorized sharing of classified information. Gossip about a new chief analyst was one thing; the full extent of their scrambling recovery was another.

Will looked up at Ethan, who watched him with a thoroughly unreadable expression. “After Ghost Protocol, a lot of our sources got spooked. The analysts are overloaded and playing catch-up, half our field agents are–” _kids_ “–junior, and frankly, the brass is too interested in getting back on the horse to care if we’re sitting on it backwards.”

“That doesn’t sound like information you should be spreading around,” Ethan said.

“It isn’t.”

“But you’re telling me.”

“I’m telling you,” Will said. He met Ethan’s gaze steadily. “It would be a mistake not to tell you, and that’s a mistake I’m tired of making.”

Ethan nodded slowly, still unreadable. Damn Ethan’s poker face; Will had no idea what he thought about any of this. As IMF’s top agent, Ethan was sent into the fastest-paced and highest-pressure crises. Will thought he might be working at top speed because he was used to it, not because it was the best decision. 

Will went on, despite the lack of encouragement. “The decision is yours, but we have the time, and I’m telling you there’s a need. This isn’t like our last mission; we can take a few days for surveillance, to confirm we’re working with good intel. And if the situation is what we’ve been told, we’ll at least have shown these kids–" whoops "–a few things, so they’ll deal better on their own next time."

“If we do this, we lose any sort of safety margin,” Ethan countered, and Will finally knew he was considering it. “Anything goes wrong, and we won’t have a second chance before Nejem leaves the country.”

“And if we act now, we might fail the objective entirely. Look at the file – we don’t even know how he’s extracting the intelligence, or if he has accomplices. If we take Nejem down and we’re wrong, another informant could pick up right where he leaves off. We need to do this right more than we need to do this fast, Ethan. That’s all I’m asking.”

"Okay," Ethan said.

"Okay?" Will asked. "I mean, okay." 

"Go on, head back in. I'll follow."

"Right," Will said. Not knowing why he'd won his argument with Ethan was almost as bad as not knowing if he'd been making any progress at all, but he'd have to table that for another day.

Will turned and went inside, his mind shifting gears from the _analyze and recommend_ mode of an analyst to the _evaluate and execute_ of a field agent.

He made sure to flush the toilet before walking down the hall, just in case.

* * *

It took thirty hours from the moment Ethan walked back into the living room of the safehouse (well, safe-apartment, really) and explained the change in plans before anything happened. Will spent a good deal of the time he wasn't on surveillance or sleeping carefully hiding anxiety over his recommendation.

After that, everything went to hell.

Two days of frantic activity later, Will stood in the now-empty apartment, and realized that he finally had nothing left to do. The mission was officially over, he’d just seen the kids to their transports, and now he could collapse.

Fortunately, Snow had cleared the couch of his extra repository for parts to build the sonar machine. He’d pulled it together in three hours flat, just barely in time for the intercept, which Will considered nothing short of miraculous. 

Right now, however, Will was far more interested in the miracle of sitting on soft cushions and not having to move for five minutes straight. He closed his eyes and rubbed tiredly at his forehead.

Will heard the door open and shut. It was probably Ethan. Will pried open his eyelids to check anyway, just in case he needed to dive for his gun. But sure enough, the agent of the hour strolled into Will’s field of vision and stopped, glancing around.

“The kids get off okay?” Ethan asked. He looked fresh and alert, like the past forty-eight hours somehow hadn’t included several close encounters with near-death in the sewers and canal system. How did he do that? It was impressive. Will wondered if it could be taught.

“Yep,” Will replied. His and Ethan’s covers were best maintained by flying out the way they’d come in, but the other agents were using ground-based exfil vectors – Meehan was on a bus, Hughes had taken the train, and Snow and his toys scored a car.

“Good,” Ethan said, and walked back out of the room. 

Will closed his eyes again. His flight wasn’t for hours, and he was packed, so maybe he could nap for a while….

Something cold and wet nudged the back of his hand, and Will startled. 

Ethan stood by the chair, offering an open bottle of beer and smirking. Jesus, the man could be quiet. 

“Thanks,” Will said, and levered himself up far enough to drink without choking. 

Ethan sat on the couch, took a long swig of his own beer, and let out a sigh. He relaxed his head back, and suddenly Will could see what Ethan hadn’t revealed before: every minute he hadn’t slept; every sewer, canal, and frustrating gadget; every minute of the last four hours of bureaucracy-wrestling necessity. Ethan’s shoulders slumped, his eyelids drooped, and he looked as close to falling asleep as Will felt.

“Hey,” Will said, cheek resting on the back cushion as he watched Ethan. Ethan rolled his head to the side to look at him. Will smiled. “You didn’t fall off any tall buildings.”

Ethan started to laugh, throat and body shaking with it. “I don’t think almost drowning is an improvement.”

“Well. It’s a process.”

Hughes had been the one to spot Talia Van Der Zee, Nejem’s girlfriend and coworker. They’d conducted a remarkably discreet office romance, but Hughes had a good eye. From there, it had been easy to figure out the rest. Talia was a piece of work: she used her relationship with Nejem to steal secrets, which she then smuggled out of the building and sold to the highest bidder. Her time had been running short, though, and she knew it. She spent the last month constructing a frame job on Nejem; all she’d needed was one last score.

“When you recommended more recon – good call, by the way – I was thinking we might find an accomplice. Not….”

“Mini submarines?”

“Mini fucking submarines,” Ethan sighed, and drank some more beer.

Snow had figured that part out. Talia had also borrowed experimental equipment from the company for her own purposes, to send the stolen information out of the heavily-secured building in jury-rigged mini submarines, via Amsterdam’s waterways. 

Ethan and Will had posed as visiting VIP entrepreneur and genius scientist, respectively, to dangle the bait. A planted bug (Hughes), a faked coffee spill (Meehan), an impromptu sonar device (Snow), and two near-drownings later (Ethan and Will, _again_ ), they’d managed to destroy the mini-subs, thwart the plot, stick Talia in jail, and identify her Syndicate contact.

“Hughes’ idea to use Van Der Zee’s own frame job against her was sheer genius in its simplicity,” Will commented.

“Yeah,” Ethan agreed warmly. “I like her style.” Her talent for improvised explosives had nothing to do with Ethan’s opinion, Will was sure.

Will drained the last of his beer, then looked sadly at his empty bottle. 

Ethan must have seen his expression, because he leaned to one side and dragged over a wine bucket that Will hadn’t noticed before. It was filled with ice and beer; Will was filled with a warmth of feeling towards Ethan Hunt and his over-achieving, hyper-competent ways. Because now, Will didn’t have to move.

They sat like that – trading idle comments about the mission and their ridiculously young team, drinking the rest of the beer – until Will pried himself free of the cushions for his transatlantic flight.

Ethan walked him to the door, shook his hand and said, “It’s been fun.”

“You’re crazy,” Will said. Ethan just grinned.

He glanced back once as he walked down the hall. Ethan, still standing in the doorway, nodded a goodbye. 

Will thought that he must be crazy too, because he was already looking forward to the next time.


	3. you hit the spot

The next mission was in Mauritius. Ethan was last to arrive at the party again – the man had a thing about dramatic entrances and exits – but that was okay, because the rest of the team was Jane and Benji. 

Jane – who had been delighted to hear Will was back in the field – sat on the floor across from him, cleaning her gun on their suite’s coffee table and laughing as she protested, “I am not a gun snob! I just have more informed opinions about guns than most people.” She paused. “And I’m not afraid to tell them that they’re wrong.”

“Pretty sure that’s what being a snob _is_ ,” Will replied, grinning. “I should know – I have more informed opinions than most people about everything, and I’m definitely willing to tell them they’re wrong. Which, for the record, you are.”

Jane pitched a balled-up napkin at Will, hitting him square between the eyes. He threw one of the tiny useless couch pillows back fast enough that it hit her in the face before she could grab it. Score one for little brother reflexes.

“Nice shot, Brandt,” Benji complimented, around a mouthful of minibar peanuts.

Impulsively, he replied, “You can call me Will, you know. We did save the world together that one time.”

“Huh,” Benji said. “I didn’t even notice. It is a bit weird, calling you by your last name while the rest of us use our first, isn’t it?”

“Little bit.”

“Will,” Jane said, sitting up straight and suddenly rather serious. “I need to ask – did you tell Ethan? About Croatia?”

“Yes,” Will said.

“And?” Benji said, leaning forward intently.

“And, it’s fine.”

“...And?” Benji repeated, after it became clear Will wasn’t going to elaborate.

“You have to give us more than ‘fine’.” Jane still looked very serious. “We can’t go into the field if you have a problem working together.”

“It’s _fine_ , Jane, and that’s all I’m going to say,” Will said. She had a point, but that conversation was private, for more reasons than Will could share. “We did a mission together already, in Amsterdam. No problems, I promise.” 

Jane stared him down, then nodded.

Benji relaxed back into his seat. “Oh, good. I like this team.”

“Me too,” said Jane. “At least I know for sure you guys have it down when things go to shit. Last mission, one of the rookie agents made me pull a John McClane.”

“A what?”

“You know, Die Hard – I had my heels off so I could run without breaking an ankle, and that asshole Johnson shot out all the light bulbs right as I sprinted across the warehouse.”

Will winced. “Ouch.”

“Tell me about it. Look,” Jane said, propping up her bare foot to show them a ragged scar on her sole. “Five stitches, but it missed the important stuff, so I got off injured reserve pretty fast.” She sighed. “I wish there was a way to wear the shoes I need for cover identities, but still be able to fight and run in a pinch. Without worrying about walking on broken glass.”

“Huh,” Benji said. “I never thought about that.”

“It’s not like you wear a lot of spike heels,” Jane said dryly.

Will stifled a laugh as the comment floated right past Benji without registering. By the abstracted look in his eyes, he had gadgets on the brain. Will reached over to nudge him with a foot, and Benji blinked back to awareness. “Right, yes, spike heels. Honestly, though, am I ever going to stop running into things they didn’t cover in training?”

“No,” Will and Jane chorused.

Benji made a face at them. “Aside from the basic nature of the job, thank you. I mean all the little stuff, like the dangers of running-or-not-running in high heels, and why you shouldn’t eat from the food cart below the Liverpool Street safehouse. You know, the useful things.”

“Ugh, how is that food cart still there? We’re spies, someone must be able to call Health and Safety on them.”

“It’s a rite of passage,” Will said solemnly.

“Emphasis on ‘passage’,” Benji said brightly, and got two pillows thrown at him.

“You’re right, though,” Will said, once they were done groaning at the pun. “There is a lot you can only learn from working with other field agents.”

“Institutional knowledge,” Jane said, nodding in agreement.

“And you can get out of date fast,” Will added. “I wasn’t gone that long between Croatia and Moscow, but I’m still bumping into things I missed.” Mentioning that period of time barely gave him a twinge now, more habit than anything. It was nice.

“You’re way better off than the rookies,” Jane told Benji. “What with working in the tech division first, and plenty of missions with experienced agents.”

“That just means I have a slightly different set of stupid questions to ask,” Benji grumbled.

“I promise to remember my own rookie days, and answer any and all stupid questions without mocking,” Jane said, pretend-solemn but sincere.

“Likewise,” Will added.

“We might even answer the intelligent questions without mocking,” a voice said from behind him. “But don’t hold me to it.”

Will twitched towards his gun before recognizing Ethan’s voice. Jane smirked at Will from her seat, where she had a clear view of the doors. Will made a face at Jane. “Christ, Ethan, if I shoot you someday for sneaking up on me, I will not feel guilty.”

“Bullets won’t kill him,” Benji said solemnly. 

“Many have tried,” Ethan agreed, grinning. “If you listen to the trainees, silver bullets _might_ do the trick.”

“Oh, the latest rumor going around was garlic and rock salt, actually.”

“Isn’t that for vampires?”

Jane squinted theatrically at Ethan. “He doesn’t _look_ sparkly.”

“I’m a traditionalist,” Ethan said, and they all laughed.

“Well, Agent Hunt, would you care to sit down?” Jane asked, her mock formality undercut by the way she shoved out a chair for Ethan with her toes, hands still busy wiping down her gun.

Ethan flopped down into the padded seat, tilting his head to see the underside of Jane’s foot. “What happened to you?”

“Pulled a McClane.”

“Fun,” Ethan said, with a tone of familiarity that absolutely did not surprise Will. 

Sitting there, Ethan looked just as relaxed and open as he had in Seattle and Amsterdam, which pleased Will more than he’d expected. Once you’d seen a real Ethan Hunt smile, the fake one just didn’t do it anymore.

“So what’s on the schedule this time?” Will asked, trying to focus. 

"We're going after the Syndicate," Ethan said.

There was a long pause, and Jane said, "That's a little...open-ended."

"Yes, it is," Ethan said, shooting her a grin that made Will's danger sense go off. "These guys have been showing up all over our radar: no apparent pattern or goal, but a high degree of sophistication and skill. So far, we’ve been putting out fires, but that’s not an acceptable long-term solution. Our mission is to find the source of the attacks, gather intel on the organization, and take down their leadership. Other IMF teams will continue counteracting individual incidents as needed, but the Amsterdam op finally gave us a lead on their money trail, and we've been authorized to follow it."

"Just the four of us?"

"For now, yes. We can loop in other agents as needed, but I want you three for the core team."

Even Jane had to hide a pleased smile at that. Seattle had been one thing; it was another to get hand-picked for Ethan Hunt’s team, especially on a long-term operation like this. Benji was blushing – and probably cursing his fair skin for it – and Will was smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, unable to stop.

Ethan grinned back at all of them. “Alright. Let’s get started.”

* * *

The job in Mauritius was an easy one, not even a real mission – just a break-in at the office of an eccentric financial manager to whose accounts they’d traced Talia Van Der Zee’s payments. The man was paranoid enough to keep his more detailed records on a non-networked computer, but his physical security system was a joke. Will finished with the lock in seconds, and opened the door. 

Then he slammed the door shut again, and re-locked it for good measure.

"Why the _fuck_ are there cheetahs in the target's office?" he asked.

Ethan didn't even have the decency to look ruffled. "I don't know," he said. "But those were definitely cheetahs. Benji?"

Benji was making familiar, frantic "umm"-ing noises over the comms. "Ah, here it is. Apparently, our financial advisor has two...no, three pet cheetahs. According to Google."

"Three cheetahs. Which live in his _office_ , Benji."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I don't really use 'cheetahs' as a keyword in my usual pre-mission searches," Benji said. Will had to agree that no one expected domesticated cheetahs, but still. _Cheetahs_.

"Okay, how do we handle this?" Ethan asked.

"You could shoot them," Jane said practically.

"Jane!" Benji sounded scandalized. "They're an endangered species! We can't do that."

"Technically, they're just a 'vulnerable' species, now," Will muttered.

The corner of Ethan’s mouth lifted slightly. "Chaput needs to think we were never here. The bullet-riddled corpses of his pets would be a dead giveaway.”

“No pun intended,” Will added, and won a full grin out of Ethan. "Would our knockout gas work on their physiology?" Will asked.

"I've seen it work on dogs before," Jane put in. "But I didn't exactly stop to check their vitals on the way out."

"Hm, well, according to this video – oh, look, how cute is th– uh, they're pretty friendly? And I hate to break it to you, but we didn't send you in with gas masks, and you can't afford the wait time for the knockout gas to dissipate. But, I mean, you could probably just walk in. It's not like they're attack-cheetahs. They're pets."

Will sighed. They didn't have a lot of options, and even as easy as the break-in had been, the clock was ticking. "Fine. But if they come at me, Benji, I'm shooting them."

"Maybe just go for a crippling shot, though, right?"

Will heard Jane laugh at Benji over the comms. “You’re a cat person, aren’t you?” she said. 

Will shook his head. He turned to the door, expecting Ethan to already be raring to go, and paused.

Ethan was standing to the side, looking hesitant. It was fucking weird.

"What's wrong?" Will said, expecting the worst.

"I'm not really good with cats," Ethan said, shifting his gun awkwardly. "They never like me. It'll be best if you go in alone."

"What – _seriously_?"

"Yes, seriously!" Ethan certainly didn't look like he was kidding.

Will checked his watch again. Goddammit, they didn't have time to argue. "Fine, cover me. And there better be a good story behind this."

"Oh, there is." Ethan paused. "Not that you'll ever hear it," he said.

Will grinned back at him, hand on the doorknob and adrenaline flowing. "You're such an asshole, why do I even like you," he said, and walked into a room full of cheetahs.

* * *

As luck had it, the cheetahs turned out to be affectionate. 

Uncomfortably so, actually. Will was still picking tan-and-black fur out of awkward places when they boarded the plane Ethan had procured for their ongoing mission, headed for Louisiana.

“Guess you shouldn’t have worn black pants,” Jane said, sympathy oozing from her voice as she settled into the front lounge area. Since ‘settling in’ also involved laying out her knife collection, Will resisted the urge to throw another pillow at her. He knew very well how good her aim was, and he liked these pants whole and not pinned to the furniture. Even if they were covered in cheetah fuzz at the moment.

“My mistake, I didn’t know tan with black spots was in this season,” Will shot back, dropping his bag by the chair.

Ethan, coming back from checking in with the pilot, caught the end of Will’s comment and grinned. "Just don't let PETA see you wearing fur," he said, deadpan but obviously laughing on the inside.

"I'll borrow one of Jane's knives and fight them off, it'll be fine."

Predictably, Ethan’s eyes lit up as he looked over Jane's collection. The two of them had spent a few hours in Mauritius huddled over guns – presumably cleaning and comparing them, but Will had heard the name 'Hannaway' in passing and stayed clear. It looked like now they were going to start in on the edged weapons.

"I need to get Benji to use the encoded laptop to contact Headquarters and make sure Zhen is on time to rendezvous in New Orleans," Ethan said, eyeing the spread wistfully. “The timing on getting Jane into the fundraiser is going to be tight enough without unexpected travel hangups.” The financial records they’d stolen had led them to Jason Arceneaux, who appeared to work for a man high in the Syndicate’s organization. Jane was going to double his girlfriend, identify the mysterious boss, and work with Zhen to plant a tracker on him at the fundraiser.

"I'll tell him," Will offered. When Ethan looked like he was going to argue, he added, "I think he owes me a lint roller."

Ethan waved him off after that, laughing, "Fair enough," as Jane pulled out a whetstone. Will left them to it.

Sure enough, Benji was bent over a table in the rear compartment, several laptops and a gadget already spread in front of him, a mass of connector cables and power cords snaking between. He glanced up as Will approached, nodded as Will explained the need for a check-in, then turned and dug around in the mess and surfaced with a roll of duct tape. Benji tossed it to Will, who caught it in bemusement. "I’m really sorry about the cheetahs, mate. The tape should help fix your...fur situation."

"Don't worry about it," Will said, genuinely surprised. He'd just been giving Benji shit about it because, well, _cheetahs_ , not because he'd screwed up significantly. "Intel is always incomplete, and you figured out an alternative fast. That's the important thing." He sat down, tearing off a piece of tape and looping it into a makeshift fur-collector.

"Yeah, I know, I know. It's just–" Benji leaned out into the aisle, obviously checking that the others were out of earshot. "I just keep going, 'Ethan Hunt picked me for his team!' inside my head, like I'm in primary school or something, which inevitably makes me feel like he just picked me because we’re friends and I'm about to trip over my feet and lose the game for everyone because I'm not good enough. It's stupid."

A little bit, Will thought, but understandable. "We all screw up at some point or another – remember Dubai? It’s about who you trust to have your back when things inevitably go wrong. That’s why Ethan chose you for this team. It’s not just because he likes working with you, even though he does.”

“And I like working with Ethan,” Benji said. “I mean, I like working with you and Jane, too, don’t take that the wrong way, I like all my work. And coworkers. But, it’s just – Ethan is a big part of why I became a field agent in the first place. After the thing in Shanghai with Julia, I kept thinking about how what I was doing wasn’t just on the computer or in the lab, that it was people’s lives. I’d known that before, but it hadn’t been real like that, you know?” 

Will nodded, thinking about the first time he’d run up against the feeling of living through something he’d only read about in reports before. He’d read the report on Shanghai, including Ethan’s personal statements about Benji ( _invaluable competence and integrity in neutralizing a highly-placed traitor and saving a civilian life_ ). “I didn’t know that mission made you start training for the field,” he said.

“Well, basically. I hadn’t considered it before then. I didn’t think I would be any good, or that I’d like it so much, but I was, and I did, and suddenly all I could think about was how much I could do out here. Then there was training. Ethan’s a bit of a legend in the IMF – have you heard any of the stories about him as an instructor? They’re brilliant, especially the one with the training robot – anyway, that, plus Shanghai, meant that I’d always dreamt about being in the field with him again.” Benji paused. “I’m pretty much over that now. Hero worship isn’t really my thing, and now I know how _completely_ insane the man can be.”

Will grinned. “But you still like working with him.”

To his surprise, Benji didn’t laugh, or make a self-deprecating comment about being crazy too. Will really should know better, but Benji’s rare and fleeting serious moments still caught him off-guard. 

“Yeah, I do,” Benji said, sincere in a way that was almost hard to hear. “I think he’s a good man, and I’m really proud that I get to work with him.” 

Will’s face must have given away his sudden sense of being adrift, because Benji smiled a little, and sidestepped into a more comfortable mode of sharing: storytelling. “He’s a fantastic agent, of course, but – you know, one of the first things he did, after we broke him out of Rankow Prison? I mean, he didn’t _tell_ me, but see, I lent him my computer while we were planning for the Kremlin, and I was checking the keylogger after to see what he’d used it for–”

Will raised an eyebrow.

“–what, okay, what is that look, we’re all spies here – rocks, glass houses, etc. So I checked to see what he’d been looking at, thinking it’d be about the Kremlin or maybe, like, a webcomic that he’d missed while he was in prison, I don’t know, what does Ethan Hunt even do on the internet?” Benji looked stricken, for a second. “He'd been searching news articles about the riot. I couldn’t figure why, until I realized he’d stopped after finding one reporting the lack of fatalities. I hadn’t even thought to check, you know? I was all, ‘Oh my god, we’re about to break into the Kremlin, I really need to make sure the camera arm doesn’t squeak, oh my god breaking into the Kremlin with Ethan Hunt’. And there was Ethan, trying to figure out if anyone died to get him out of prison.” 

Benji was back to looking solemn. It was startling on his face, which was usually so ready to laugh. “All these years, doing this job, and Ethan’s still like that. He still thinks about the people he has to lie to as people. Anyway,” he glanced away, back down at his nest of laptops, “I like working with Ethan.”

Will didn’t say anything for a long moment. He’d never thought about it like that, but Ethan did things like that a lot. He’d usually back up his actions with logical reasons, but now that Benji had pointed out the crux of the pattern, Will could think of a dozen other instances that were probably disguised instances of Ethan Hunt being secretly a bit of a soft touch for people he liked, but officially rationalizing it as part of the mission.

“Yeah. I like working with Ethan, too,” Will said. Then he smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “And hey, you’re not too bad yourself.”

Benji snorted into the wiring. “You’re just saying that so I don’t drop you into any more ovens with magnets,” he said, smiling down at his work and clearly pleased.

“Well. You _did_ catch me,” Will said, and hoped Benji understood what he meant. Will stood up and clapped Benji on the shoulder, careful not to jostle his work, and smiled at him before moving off.


	4. ain't that a hole in a boat

New Orleans was humid as hell, but formalwear bowed to no weather, so Will was just grateful his suit was linen. Will twisted a cufflink into his sleeve and glanced over to check Jane's progress.

He did a double-take.

“Ethan. Ethan, stop. What are you doing?”

Ethan looked down at his hands. “Helping,” he said, seriously.

Will stared at Ethan's hands in horror. The strands were too loose and had stray bits sticking out, and he could see it from ten feet away. “Okay, no,” he said, crossing the room and pushing Ethan back with a hand on his chest. He didn't let it linger. “I'm ready enough, you just, go over there and do something you're actually good at.” 

He swiftly unwove the braid in Jane’s hair – it looked like Ethan had only done a couple, thank god – and restarted it, tight and neat against her scalp. Jane's shoulders were shaking as she laughed silently.

Ethan continued to stand at the edge of Will's peripheral vision for several moments too long. He looked up just in time to see Ethan snap his mouth shut and wipe a look of – was that _embarrassment_? – off his face.

“Don't worry, Ethan,” Will teased gently. “Teammates are supposed to have complementary skills, right?”

Ethan huffed a laugh, shaking his head as he turned away. Will let his hands work automatically as he watched Ethan cross the room and begin checking the zipline.

“Line of sight is clear,” Zhen said as she reentered the room carrying a sniper rifle. Will snapped his attention back to his hands. “If Jane can get the window open, I should have no problem–” She stopped short and an unholy smirk lit her face. Will kept braiding studiously. “Uh oh. Your double get a makeover since yesterday?”

“She got her hair did,” Jane drawled in agreement, fingers whipping through a braid next to her ear. “ _And_ she texted Arseneaux a picture, so now I need a head full of braids. We're a little short on time, can you help?”

“I have three little sisters, you bet your ass I can,” said Zhen. She leaned her rifle against the wall and started braiding the opposite side of Jane's hair with terrifying speed.

“So, Will,” Jane said, amusement only slightly muffled by the curtain of braids in front of her face. “Where did you learn to braid hair?”

“Older sister,” he said, smiling down at his hands. The movement was rhythmic and soothing, even after so many years. “Emily hated leaving her hair down and our mother wouldn't let her cut it short, so she'd braid it back every morning. But then she broke her arm when I was 10.” He stopped, tied off the end of the braid, and started the next.

“And you just learned how to help out of the kindness of your pre-pubescent heart?” Zhen asked dryly.

Will grinned at her. “Nah, she bribed me. Made it four weeks before she ran out of allowance money and took a pair of scissors to her head.” Specifically, she'd been paying him in books that his parents wouldn't buy for him – ten years old was maybe a little young to read Catch-22, though his parents had religious rather than age objections.

Zhen winced. “Bet your mom loved that.”

“Second biggest fight they ever had,” he agreed, tying off another braid. “But the one when she announced at Sunday dinner that she was an atheist and had joined the Marines to be a combat engineer pretty much blew it out of the water. Which is why Mom thinks I’m an actuary.”

Jane and Zhen both got identical sympathetic looks on their faces, which was a little disconcerting. Jane volunteered, “My parents think I'm a UN translator, and probably would even if we got declassified tomorrow.”

“One time, I had to requisition an agent to come home with me for the holidays because my mother had reached the point of hacking my cover email to see if I was dating anyone,” Zhen agreed, then got a rueful look on her face. “Oops, I forgot still owe Declan for that.”

“You’re fake-dating _Declan_?” Ethan cut in from the far side of the room. They’d all worked together to retrieve the Rabbit’s Foot, Will remembered, in a bid to save Julia’s life.

“Well....” Zhen cocked her head and smiled. “Fake-dating with benefits.”

Jane snorted underneath her braids. "Right, because that never gets complicated.” She paused. “Not that I know anything about it, of course.”

"I like complicated," Zhen said, totally serene. "Except when my family is involved. And Declan does a surprisingly great job of playing the perfect boyfriend, so it makes my life a lot simpler there."

Jane started in on a story about her own family in response, but Will was distracted by Ethan, standing quietly across the room. Will watched him wind the zip line through his hands with unnecessary focus and care, and thought about the facts he’d read in Ethan’s bio: grew up an only son, isolated childhood in the country, both parents dead for over a decade – his father from cancer in the nineties, and his mother in a car accident in 2001. His last remaining relative, an uncle, died in 2005; part of the stated reason that Ethan left the field and moved to DC to become a training officer was to be near him.

After that, he'd had Julia. Will knew how that ended.

Will stopped just as he was about to finish the braid he was working on, checked their remaining time, and unraveled it. Jane peered up at him questioningly through her curtain of braids, but he ignored her.

"Hey, Ethan, I'm on the last few braids," he said, and saw Jane stealthily block Zhen's hand from the remaining strands. "Want to learn how to do it right?"

"For the next time we have to do something like this?" Ethan asked dryly.

"Yeah," Will said. "Come on, I'll show you all my secrets."

It was a little obvious, but Ethan smiled, and crossed the room to join him.

"Here," Will said, and showed Ethan how to position his fingers, while explaining the basics.

Will had never been this close to Ethan in a non-emergency situation; Ethan’s chest pressed into Will's shoulder as he angled himself to work in the close space. Ethan's hands were warm, and dry despite their swampy surroundings. He picked things up quickly, which did not surprise Will at all. They only had to unravel and redo it once before Ethan produced a respectably smooth, tight braid.

Jane stood, shook her head tentatively, and nodded her thanks to Ethan and Will.

It wasn't until Ethan's phone went off in his pocket that Will realized how close they were still standing. Ethan didn't move an inch, just pulled his phone out and frowned down at the screen. 

"Benji keeps sending me these pictures. I have no idea why." He tilted the phone in Will's direction, and Will leaned in.

Ethan smelled clean, like bar soap, and yes, fine. Ethan Hunt was an attractive man. Will knew this; it was a significant factor in the team’s tactical planning. There was no reason to be particularly noticing right now. Will shook off his distraction, and focused on the phone.

The message from Benji said only _no change to report from VillainWatch. still bored._ He'd attached a picture of a panda draped forlornly over a rock.

Jane laughed from directly behind his shoulder, and Will startled away from her and Ethan.

"He's been sending me those, too," she said, still snickering. "I guess it’s what I get for telling him he's such a sad panda on surveillance duty."

Ethan and Will exchanged a glance. “There’s no time to Google it now,” Ethan said in a reluctant undertone. “We have to get the zipline in place.”

Will sighed, and they started walking over to the equipment. “I hear patience is a virtue.”

Ethan checked his watch. “Five minutes to door knock,” he said, and shared a grin with Will.


	5. like the fella once said

Waiting was Will’s least favorite part of being a field agent. As an analyst, there was always some new data or different angles to take, but the nature of planting a tracker created a bottleneck in which they could only sit and wait for the signal to go somewhere interesting. 

And wait. 

And wait some more.

Naturally, after a few days of that – while drinking the swill that sat in the break room at IMF headquarters and pretended to be coffee – the team’s waiting devolved into wild speculation. 

“We still don’t know why the Syndicate’s doing all this, right?”

“Right,” Will confirmed, saluting Jane with his mug of barely-counts-as-coffee. “No ideological statements, no organizational pattern to their attacks that we can find. Adam–” who had wandered through for caffeinated swill of his own half an hour ago and been introduced all around “–says it’s been driving him up the wall. Makes me glad I’m not the analyst on this.” The lack of data still kinda drove him crazy, but now he could go out and hit things to distract himself. At least, when they weren’t _waiting_.

“Maybe they’re just out to make money.” Benji suggested. “ _Evil_ money.”

"Well, that's... straightforward," Will said.

“Might explain the randomness of the incidents,” Ethan added, sliding through the conference room door behind Will. Will gave himself a mental point for not jumping – he had recognized Ethan’s footsteps in the hall – then found himself turning at the smell of cheap bar soap. Ethan must have showered after his trip to the gym.

Sure enough, Ethan’s hair was dripping onto his worn grey t-shirt, which clung to still-damp skin in places. A drop of water slid from behind Ethan’s ear to trace down the muscled line of his neck, and Will had never been happy about the tiny inadequate towels in the IMF gym before.

Will managed to jerk his eyes away as Ethan added, “Of course, Benji, your theory doesn’t explain the robbery they pulled at that robotics convention last month. They took one of the least advanced models at the event – that’s hardly a profit-based move.”

“Are you kidding? That was a _completely functional_ replica of Robby the Robot with programmable behaviors! Do you have any idea what certain science fiction fans would pay for that?”

“Didn’t think _Lost in Space_ had that many rich fans,” Ethan said, shivering a wink at Will.

“Robby was from _Forbidden Planet_ , Ethan, honestly. How do you know so many ways to punch someone in the face and not know that?”

“He keeps bad company,” Jane said helpfully.

“He always did,” a woman said from the doorway to the room. “Didn’t I teach you better than that, Ethan?”

Will swiveled his chair the rest of the way around and grinned in recognition.

“Cinnamon Carter,” Ethan said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “Still trying to retire?” She looked just the same as she had when Will met her during his training – poised and elegantly dressed, with a perpetual glint of mischief in her eyes – except for her hair, which had finally turned a pure gleaming white.

“I did retire,” she drawled, tapping Ethan’s chin playfully. “Last year. Then they called me back in after your little incident in Mumbai. You ruined years of dramatic almost-exits.”

Ethan winced theatrically. “Forgive me?”

“I’m sure I’ll think of a way for you to make it up to me,” she said, smiling dangerously at him. Removing her attention from Ethan with playful disdain, she looked around the room. “It’s lovely to see so many old students in one place. Though I’m afraid we haven’t been introduced, Mr...?”

“Dunn,” Benji said, scrambling to his feet and leaning awkwardly over the table to shake her hand. “Benji Dunn. Really, it’s an honor to meet you, ma’am.”

“Please, call me Cinnamon,” she purred, and Benji turned an interesting shade of pink. Cinnamon grinned indulgently and patted his hand – at which point Benji realized he hadn’t let go of their handshake, blushed harder, and snatched his hand back.

Will could understand Benji’s reaction. He had been the same way for a while, before long exposure to her as a training officer and a host of inventively evil training exercises had worn the shine off her impeccable, decades-long career as one of the IMF’s most successful agents. Even now, the fashion business Cinnamon had created after her ‘retirement’ from modeling (and active field work) still ran covers for the agency, and provided the couture gowns they needed for their more high class undercover work.

“You could call her Agent Carter,” Jane said, grinning at Benji’s expression, “but that might get confusing.”

“Nonsense, Jane,” Cinnamon said mischievously. “I sure no one could confuse us. You’re so much better than me at knife fighting.”

Ethan squeezed past Will’s chair, sliding his hand across Will’s shoulders, and crossed over to the coffeepot as he asked, “Cinnamon, would you like some coffee?” He frowned down at the mug in his hand, clearly doubting its cleanliness, and bent to rummage in the cabinet below for another one. His pants stretched enticingly over the muscle of his ass, and Will made himself look away.

Only to look up and find Cinnamon staring at them, one pale eyebrow arching.

Will froze, and quite sensibly began to panic.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve been drinking the communal coffee,” Cinnamon said in perfect tones of dismay, even as she studied Will keenly. “I have something better you can drink instead. Will, if you could come help me – I think I hid the bag up on a shelf so my assistant wouldn’t get into it.”

Resigning himself to her relentless curiosity, Will stood and followed Cinnamon to her office. The nameplate now read ‘Director of Agent Training’; clearly, coming out of retirement had been accompanied by a promotion.

Cinnamon took about two seconds to pull a bag of coffee labeled in Tagalog out of her desk drawer, then leaned back in her chair and considered Will. “So, Ethan Hunt. He does catch the eye, doesn’t he?” Cinnamon paused, leadingly, and Will pressed his lips together. “Hmm. Ethan was always an unusual type for undercover work, despite his skill at improvisation. I used to despair of his disguise training, because he could only ever play charismatic types. All senators and generals! Which is quite useful, to be fair, but I couldn’t get him to tone it _down_.” She sighed. “I gave up after the whole dreadful mess with Jim. Ethan simply started wearing a mask with everyone.”

“Not everyone,” Will said, automatically defensive, and realized a second too late that Cinnamon had done it on purpose.

Cinnamon pursed her lips. “Yes. It’s a fairly select group of agents, don’t you think?”

Will sighed, and dropped into the chair in front of her desk. “You mean, everyone who’s ever gone rogue with him before? Yeah, I noticed that.” Jane, Benji, Zhen, Luther Stickell, Declan Gormley, and Will himself: six agents out of the whole IMF.

"Nice to see being in the field hasn't turned off your ability to think," Cinnamon teased. She folded her arms and lifted her eyebrows in the way Will remembered from his training as meaning 'present your conclusions.' He'd always been better at data than emotions, and Cinnamon had pushed him ruthlessly in that regard like the good and terrifying teacher she was.

Will huffed a breath and crossed his arms. "He trusts us more than other agents, because we had his back when things went to hell. When it wasn’t our job anymore, just the right thing to do."

"And the other side of that?"

"We...trust him more, too?"

Cinnamon smirked – he'd scored a point, but not the right one. "The _other_ side, Will."

"That Ethan doesn't trust anyone else?" Will guessed. "Except he does. I've seen him work with other IMF agents. You can’t do this job and not."

"Yes, a leap of faith is still necessary for the way the IMF runs its teams. But that kind of professional trust can still come with contingency planning, Will. I suspect he chooses to work with you six because he feels he can focus on the mission instead of having to second-guess his teammates. It's a different level of trust." She paused. "Rather like the difference between the trust you give a teammate and the trust you give someone you love."

And there was her point.

“Look, it’s not – it’s not that. It’s just a crush,” Will said. Just a physical thing, the result of too much adrenaline and too many high-stakes missions. Those things were pretty much unavoidable in Ethan’s company. And like Cinnamon said: Ethan just couldn’t turn off the charm. Will wasn’t going to make the mistake of interpreting that as an interest in either men in general or Will in particular, so the whole situation was moot.

“Be sure of that, Will, for both your sakes.” She paused. “Does he know you were in Croatia?"

"Yeah, we talked about it." Will tucked his chin down, trying to hide as much as he could from Cinnamon. She was far too perceptive, and Julia was one secret he couldn't risk.

"And he's kept you on his team," she said, sounding surprised. "Well. Maybe it's not so hopeless after all. But Will, don’t be hurt if he can’t trust you with his personal life as well as on the job. Those are two very different things in Ethan Hunt’s mind.”

Will realized with a shock that yes, Ethan could trust him with both, and he had. But Cinnamon couldn't know that.

“It’s just a crush,” he repeated firmly. “He trusts me in the field; that’s what’s important.”

Cinnamon sighed. “Alright, Will.” She eyed him for a long moment, and had just opened her mouth to say something else when Benji skidded around the corner.

“We got something on the tracker!” he said breathlessly, bracing himself on the door frame. “We’re going to Siberia!”

Perfect, Will thought. Russia _again_. This was going to go great.


	6. a face without a name

Most days, Will loved his work. He was challenged, mind and body, in a way he'd craved for years growing up; he consistently achieved things that other people officially deemed impossible; and his coworkers were a collection of fierce, loyal, intelligent nutcases who were never boring (even when he wished they would be, just for a little while).

Today was not one of those days.

They’d tracked Arseneaux’s boss here – a secret Syndicate complex hidden in the far reaches of Siberia. It had been Will’s idea to wait an additional two days beyond that for recon before infiltration; half a dozen other visitors had come and gone in that time, which would camouflage the source of the location’s discovery, and hopefully allow their continuing surveillance of the man to proceed unnoticed.

None of this was particularly comforting at the moment, Will thought, crouched at the top of a staircase and cursing under his breath. Benji and Jane would be out of the complex by now, along with the intel Benji had pried from the computer system. Will and Ethan were on distraction duty – though, actually getting _caught_ by security hadn’t been part of the plan, damn it. The exit beside him was on external lockdown, and with the second guard only a few flights down and moving fast, Will didn’t have time to figure out a way past. Will’s gun was gone, fallen down the stairwell in the earlier scuffle, and the last time Will had seen Ethan, he’d been face-down and handcuffed. Will had made a break for it halfway through his own cuffing, which had earned him the bullet graze currently soaking his left sleeve with blood and leaving an inconvenient trail of droplets. 

In short, Will was well and truly cornered, he was injured, and the sole asset left in his possession were the cuffs dangling from his right wrist.

So, Will eyed the handcuffs. He doubted the guard would let him get close enough again to use them as a weapon. At this point, the best he could do was to avoid being properly restrained. 

Spotting a crack in the concrete, Will roughly wedged the swivel eye of the loose cuff into the crevice, then gave the plate a sharp kick. It worked even better than he’d hoped; the metal sheared off at the joint, leaving him holding a loop of metal and wearing a bracelet with two dangling chain links. 

Just in time, too. “Hands up!” the guard shouted, rounding the corner with gun raised. 

Will threw the loop in the guard’s face and rushed him. 

The first shot went wide with the man’s instinctive flinch; the second went off next to Will’s head as he closed the distance and got a hand on the man’s wrist. His ear rang dizzyingly. Will went for a kick to the knee and was blocked; he tried for a punch to the nose to take out the guard’s vision, and it landed wide. 

And then he was fucked, because this guard had half a foot and 90 pounds of muscle on Will, and there was nothing he could do to avoid being slammed into a concrete wall and flung down a flight of stairs.

Breath knocked out of him, ears still ringing, Will hit the landing and stayed down. 

Well, it’d been worth a try. At least he hadn’t broken any ribs, which he had considered a distinct probability.

With the high ground, a gun, and a healthy sense of just how much distance to keep between himself and Will this time, the guard had no trouble marching him back to the hallway where the second guard kept Ethan handcuffed and kneeling at gunpoint.

The big guard shoved Will to his knees beside Ethan. “Hi,” Will said breathlessly, as the guard backed away next to his companion, both training their guns warily.

“Hi,” Ethan said, simultaneously listening to the guards’ conversation. “How’s the shoulder?”

“Oh, fine,” Will said. Holding his hands locked on top of his head made his shoulder hurt like hell, but Ethan didn’t need to be told that.

The guards were debating tensely in Russian; the gist of the discussion seemed to be ‘we have two crazy people, but now we only have one set of handcuffs, fuck.’ Will allowed himself a little bit of job satisfaction. And then he took it away again for getting caught. 

Will was surprised when their two geniuses decided that the best solution was to handcuff Will and Ethan together. He was glad they cuffed his right wrist to Ethan’s left – Will's dominant hand remained free, Ethan was ambidextrous, and they would’ve been really uncomfortable if the guards had cuffed them left-to-left or right-to-right.

As they started walking, the guards following with guns drawn, he noted that Ethan had already used the explosives hidden on his right wrist, left ankle, and waistband during their earlier chase. But the exploding button on his left wrist was still there, and Will wasted no time snagging it with two fingers.

Ethan looked sidelong and met Will’s glance. Giving a slight nod, he tapped three fingers against the back of Will’s hand, then two, one.

Will activated the button and flicked it behind them as Ethan flung himself to the left, knocking Will through a doorway as the guards opened fire. A wall of heat slammed into Will’s back as the button detonated, but he was mostly shielded from the explosion by Ethan’s body. 

The shooting behind them stopped abruptly, and Will staggered upright, off-balance with his hand stretched behind him towards Ethan. It took a moment to catch his breath and look around. The room was a lab of some kind, lined with orderly samples in tall cases. 

A figure to the right caught his eye – a real live scientist, frozen wide-eyed next to a vent hood, and that wasn’t good. Will was opening his mouth to warn Ethan when the woman screamed, grabbed the petri dish in front of her, and flung it straight into Ethan’s face.

Ethan shouted and flinched away, his right hand flying up to his eyes. Horrified, Will lunged after the woman, getting her in a left-armed chokehold as she turned to run. Ethan choked pained breaths next to him, jerking Will’s arm as he kept instinctively drawing his other hand toward his face, and repeatedly pulling up short on the handcuffs.

“What the hell is that?” he shouted at the woman, but she was lost to panic, hyperventilating and fighting his one-armed hold. Will dragged her bodily with him, awkwardly towing Ethan by the handcuffs to the nearest sink. Sometimes water exacerbated chemical burns, although the petri dish suggested this was biological, but what choice did they have either way?

Ethan fumbled on the water and stuck his face under the faucet. Water splashed onto Will’s cuffed hand as Ethan scrubbed at his eyes. 

“Ethan? Talk to me, Ethan.” Will leaned in, trying to get a look at the damage. 

Taking advantage of his distraction, the scientist snaked out of his hold, lunging toward a heavy metal pan on the nearby bench. Tethered to Ethan, Will kicked out and caught her hard in the thigh; she slipped, head slamming hard into the stainless steel counter. The woman slumped to the ground, clearly unconscious.

“Fuck!” Will said. He looked around to see if she had any notes or samples left that could tell him about the mystery substance, even as he repeated “Ethan?” Will could hear the strained worry in his own voice.

“I’m good, I’m fine,” Ethan said, muffled and wet. Not seeing anything useful, Will gave up and turned. Ethan was still rinsing his face, but his eyes were open and clear, albeit reddened. “It was just some kind of powder, Will, I’m okay. I can see now.” He splashed one final handful of water over his face, then straightened up, dripping everywhere.

Will breathed in deep, and let it out slow. “She’s out cold, and I have no idea what that was. She was working under the vent hood, so it could be something dangerous–”

“I’m fine,” Ethan repeated, like saying it more firmly would make it more true. “And I’ll get checked out by medical later. Are _you_ okay?” he asked, eyeing Will’s blood-stained shoulder.

“It’s just a graze,” Will said. “You’re really not feeling any ill effects?”

“Good,” Ethan said, ignoring his question entirely. “We need to get out of here; that blast is going to bring the rest of the security team down on us.”

As if on cue, shouts echoed distantly in the corridor. Will and Ethan glanced at each other, then around the lab. Spotting no additional exits or potential lockpicks, they ran for it.

The first door around the corner was only a disused maintenance closet, but it held their first pieces of luck – an access hatch that opened into a system of tunnels, and an old mop handle. The sound of trickling water from the tunnel was promising; drainage could smell to high heaven, but by their very nature, drains inevitably let out somewhere. 

They dropped into the tunnel and jammed the hatch with the mop handle. Will would’ve liked to have it as a weapon, but preventing pursuit was more important at the moment.

Cracking the chem light extracted from Will’s jacket, Ethan led the way at an awkward jog; they were still handcuffed together, and the narrow tunnel limited their movement even further. Will was more grateful than ever today for Benji’s “well, you never know…” approach to equipment supply, but he planned to suggest lockpicks as a future essential. 

They'd just barely hit a running rhythm that worked with the handcuffs when Ethan slowed, and pulled them to a halt.

Panting, Will stopped beside him. “What is it?” he asked softly, peering into the darkness ahead; maybe Ethan had heard something.

Ethan didn’t reply. 

Will looked over, concerned – and the bottom of his stomach dropped out. Ethan was shaking his head dazedly, wavering on his feet. He blinked hard, once, twice, before his eyes rolled up in his head.

“Ethan? Ethan!” Will hissed, as Ethan slumped into the tunnel wall. Will caught his shoulders and lowered him to the ground awkwardly, trying to keep the handcuffs from torquing Ethan’s limp arm. He checked Ethan’s pulse: way too fast, but strong. Pupils reacted fine to light, but his skin was flushed and sheened with sweat, his temperature too high. Damn it, those were classic signs of a drug reaction, but Will needed more _information_ , he couldn’t help Ethan like this; he didn’t have a clue what was tearing through his system. 

He tried not to think about Ethan’s last close encounter with a bio-lab, in Australia. He tried not to think about how bioweapons research had advanced since then, or how it might already be too late.

Feeling sick, Will started to check for injuries – a wound, at least, Will might do something to help. Ethan’s head was whole and unmarked; Will shifted Ethan’s weight to the side, sliding a hand down his back. Maybe he’d been hit during the explosion–

Ethan’s eyes snapped open, and Will was thrown into the wall before he could blink, a forearm braced at his throat. Ethan’s left hand pinned Will’s handcuffed wrist next to his head.

“It’s just me!” Will said, fighting down the instinct to struggle. “Easy, Ethan. Jesus, you really had me worried there.”

Ethan just looked at him, grip not easing at all. He seemed strange in the stark blue-white light of the fallen chem light, his face closed off. Will went cold, and didn’t know why.

“You gonna let me go now?” Will asked slowly. He tried pressing out of the hold.

Ethan slammed him hard against the wall, and yeah, Will officially had a bad feeling about this.

“Who the hell are you?” Ethan demanded, voice harsh. “Where am I? Who sent you?”

Oh, _fuck_.

Will swallowed. “Ethan, listen to me,” he started, and Ethan increased the pressure, cutting off his voice.

“Answer me right now, or I'll break your neck,” Ethan said, and then backed off just enough to let him speak.

Well, that was clear enough. Will dragged in a breath, and didn’t waste the opportunity. “My name is William Brandt. I’m an IMF agent on your team, and we’re in Siberia on a mission. Ethan, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Ethan’s grip tightened again. “The last thing I remember is falling asleep in a hotel room in Prague. Someone killed five people and framed me for it. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you?” he asked in a cold, level voice.

Prague? Will’s brows knit. His brain kicked into high gear, flashing through what he remembered of Ethan’s case history and – oh. _Prague_. Shit.

“Ethan, what year do you think it is?” Will asked carefully. Please don’t think it’s–

“1996,” Ethan said. 

“Right,” Will said faintly. 1996. Prague. Ethan’s team – his friends – were dead, and Will had just hit the retrograde amnesia jackpot. Ethan was re-living one of the worst days of his life, and he thought Will was responsible. 

Will took a deep breath. “Ethan, it’s 2012. You’re the leader of my IMF team, we’re on a mission, and you were exposed to a drug that is definitely affecting your memory, because the last thing you remember happened 15 years ago.”

Ethan looked startled – it certainly wasn’t something you heard every day, Will supposed – before the poker face returned. “Prove it,” he said.

Will thought for a second, then glanced at his watch. Ethan didn’t even bother to look. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, dry as dust. “I’ve done memory loss cons before. Watches are easy.”

Will remembered the mission in Ethan’s file – a contrived traffic accident, a captured foreign agent, and a Los Angeles mansion transformed into a fake prison – and conceded the point.

“Right,” he said. “That’s fair. I don’t...a newsstand would be ideal, or a public place with people to talk to, but we’re in a tunnel in Siberia, so that’s not going to happen.”

Ethan grinned. “How terribly inconvenient.” It was all sharp edges and _wrong_ , although Will was certain a stranger would’ve found it charming. 

“I can tell you what happened to your team,” Will said, and Ethan’s face went cold again. That was anger; Will remembered how it had looked on Ethan in Dubai. “I didn’t have anything to do with it; I only read the file. I just don’t think you’ll believe me.”

“Try me,” Ethan said.

This was probably a really, really bad idea, but Will was out of options. “If falling asleep is the last thing you remember,” Will started, “Then you should know that Claire Phelps survived the mole hunt.”

Ethan’s face did something incredibly complicated, and Will plowed on, hating himself a little for the painful hope in Ethan’s expression.

“She died about a week later, shot by Jim Phelps. He faked his death and murdered your team to get his hands on the NOC list, and Claire was in on it–”

Ethan slammed him back into the wall, forearm choking off the words. “ _No_ ,” he hissed. “You’re lying, you–” Ethan cut himself short, shaking his head sharply. He looked desperately confused for a second. He stared at Will, eyes wide, but Will got the feeling he saw something else entirely.

And then Ethan said: “There was a train.”

“Yes,” Will agreed, cautiously. “And a helicopter. In a tunnel.”

“Right,” Ethan said, distant. 

“You remember that?”

“Yes. I didn’t, a minute ago.”

“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” Will tried.

Apparently, Ethan was still pretty angry, because he grabbed Will by the shoulder and knocked him into the wall again. Will wasn’t expecting it; his head impacted hard on the concrete, and _fuck_ , that was his injured shoulder. He couldn’t help the pained noise.

Will opened his eyes to see Ethan watching him, in a sharp, analytical way that Will normally only saw when someone had one of the team at gunpoint. 

Ethan didn’t know Will. Even if the pattern continued, and Ethan regained his memory of the last fifteen years piece by gradual piece, he wouldn’t remember Will for a while yet. Maybe Will would get lucky, and a conveniently recent memory of the team would come back – or maybe Ethan would remember their fight in Dubai, but nothing that came before or after.

Either way, it didn’t matter. Ethan didn’t remember Will, and until he did, Ethan wouldn’t trust him. 

“Ethan,” Will started, and then stopped. The man in front of him was like a stranger, like deja vu – familiar, but not. Will suddenly, desperately wished his Ethan would come back, because he hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to lose him.

A distant sound echoed down the tunnel, and they both turned their heads sharply to peer into the gloom. Damn it, there wasn’t _time_ for this.

“Look, I’m sorry about your team, Ethan, I really am,” Will said quietly. “I know this is hard for you, but we have to keep moving. They’ll figure out where we went eventually, we’re unarmed, and it’s a long way to the rendezvous.”

“Rendezvous?” Ethan asked – and of course, he didn’t remember. 

“With Jane and Benji. They’re the rest of our team.”

“This wouldn’t mean I trust you,” Ethan said.

“I know,” Will said. It still hurt to hear. He smiled, a little painfully. “But I trust you.”

Ethan studied him for a moment, his grip tightening unconsciously. Will tipped his chin up and met his gaze without flinching. The corner of Ethan’s mouth lifted, just a touch. He suddenly released Will and stepped back. “After you, then,” he said, gesturing with his free hand.

Scooping up the chem light, Will walked ahead, trying to ignore the novel sensation of having Ethan Hunt at his back while radiating enough menace to make his hair stand on end. 

He didn’t like it.

Something trickled down from underneath his left sleeve, and Will bit back a curse. All his bashing into the wall had made the bullet graze start bleeding again. Will lifted his right hand to check the damage, but was brought up short when Ethan yanked back. He hissed as the cuff bit into his wrist and snapped, “I’m bleeding again, asshole, I need some slack so I can apply pressure.” 

Will winced as soon as the words left his mouth. 

Ethan was looking at him, one eyebrow cocked sarcastically. “Do you talk to all your team leaders that way?” he asked, and Will could hear the testing note under his casual tone.

“Just you,” Will muttered. Then, since he had already been too honest, “And only when you’re being a control freak.” He usually didn’t curse at Ethan, though. Will realized that, irrationally, he felt angry at Ethan – at _this_ Ethan – for taking Will’s version away, even though he wasn’t responsible.

Ethan smirked at him, in such a way that Will couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely amused or not, but he gave Will the slack he’d asked for.

The graze was definitely bleeding again, but more sluggishly. Will guessed it would stop soon – mostly it was that his sleeve was completely soaked now, and the blood was dripping straight down his arm. It was both annoying, and dangerous.

"I'm leaving a blood trail," Will said. "Do you still have that pressure bandage in – sorry, never mind. Can you check the lining of your jacket?" _And maybe stop looking at me like that?_ he thought plaintively. Being on the receiving end of Ethan's suspicious face wasn't entirely unfamiliar, but he hadn't seen it in a while. He'd forgotten how effective it was.

Without shifting his expression or taking his eyes off Will at all, Ethan reached into his jacket and ripped out the pressure bandage, but wrapped it around Will's arm himself. Will wished he could consider it a gesture of goodwill, but he could read the implied _I'm only doing this myself because I think you might attack me with it_. Really making progress, here.

Will snorted, struck by a thought.

"What?" Ethan said sharply.

"I just realized, the other first time we met was also in Russia," Will said dryly. "You didn't like me much then, either."

"Really?” Ethan said, and even though Will knew Ethan wasn’t Ethan, the note of sarcasm still fucking hurt. “Why not?"

Will hesitated. "Well, you were framed for blowing up the Kremlin, then escaped the hospital– " with a half-dozen injuries, if Will remembered correctly "–and called it in. I was with the Secretary on pickup, and you weren't too pleased at the news that he'd enacted Ghost Protocol. Then someone shot him and ran our car off the road, so we had to escape from an SUV underwater with a bunch of goons shooting at us with machine guns. We didn't get hypothermia, or shot, but that's all I can really say for the experience."

It sounded extra implausible when he said it like that, and Ethan looked extra unconvinced. Fantastic. Since he was losing this conversation anyway, Will added, "Plus, you didn't know I was a former field agent at the time, so you thought I was kinda useless."

"What were you?"

"Chief analyst."

Finally, Ethan made a face that wasn't disapproving. "And now you're in the field again? Bad at your job, or does the new secretary not like you?" he asked, his eyebrows raising.

"Actually, you convinced me to come back," Will said. Now was not the time to bring up Julia. "I guess I turned out to be less useless than you thought."

"Hmm," Ethan said, his expression shutting down. He let Will pull into the lead again, and Will sighed. Maybe he’d sensed that Will was leaving something out – Ethan had always been good at detecting lies, since long before they started training agents to read microexpressions.

There was slightly less menace coming from Ethan’s direction now, Will thought, but maybe that was wishful thinking.

At least he was paying attention when Ethan stumbled to a halt, stifling a pained noise.

“Ethan? What’s wrong?”

“Just...remembering getting shot,” Ethan said, gritting his teeth.

Will winced. “Uh. Which time?”

“1998,” Ethan said, clearly testing.

Will had never been so grateful for his freaky memory in his life. “Cape Town, right?” There’d been an incident with an elephant gun. Ouch.

“Right,” Ethan said grudgingly, then actually asked, “Any more fun injuries coming up?”

“I’m not sure – are the memories coming back in order?” 

“Yes, and regularly.”

Will checked his watch. They’d been in the tunnel for about half an hour since the whole wall-slamming interlude, and Ethan had recovered memories from late 1996 through early 1998. Which meant it would be at least eight hours until Ethan remembered him again, if the rate stayed steady. “1999 should be fine, but 2000 was a little rough.”

“Started the century as I meant to go on, huh?” Ethan said, and Will grinned where Ethan couldn’t see him – far more than the joke deserved, to be honest, but it was the first time since the memory loss Ethan had sounded like someone who didn’t utterly despise Will.

Not long after, Will spotted a literal light at the end of their actual tunnel, and suddenly understand why the phrase had become such a cliche: it was a really, really great thing to see. Especially since he was cold, bleeding, and dragging his reluctant, lethal, amnesiac friend behind him by a handcuff chain. Will wanted an antidote, a bolt cutter, and some painkillers, in that order.

Unfortunately, the other guys had gotten to the end of the tunnel first. 

When a thug with a gun swung into view and barked something in Russian, Will just sighed. He was so sick of these guys.

“He wants us to put our hands in the air,” Ethan translated.

“Yep, got that,” Will said, trying not to wince as the movement strained his shoulder wound. Again.

He looked back up in time to see a figure in snow camo step from behind a tree and wallop the guard on the head with a large branch. The thug keeled over in a very satisfying manner.

“Hi, Jane,” Will said in relief. “Ethan has amnesia.”

“Oh, shit,” Jane said, looking concerned and dropping the branch on the guard’s back. “Retrograde or anterograde? What caused it?”

“Unknown drug, inhaled or possibly absorbed – someone threw it in his eyes,” Will elaborated, at Jane’s look. “Definitely retrograde, but he’s already gotten some back. The memories seem to be returning chronologically.”

“I’m past Y2K now,” Ethan said, looking amused, but not at all relaxed.

“Ugh,” Jane said, stepping closer to examine their handcuffs. “That mess. You were in Egypt for that, right?”

“Nigeria,” Ethan and Will said in unison, and glanced at each other.

“Please tell me we have a ride out of here,” Will added.

“Yeah, c’mon,” Jane said, handing Ethan a lockpick for the cuffs and turning to lead the way. “Ethan, you’ll remember Luther. He’s waiting with the helicopter now.” She dropped the information as casually as she’d said everything else, and Will realized how she was handling Ethan – acting like he wasn’t a threat, like she was used to him being around, like chatting about old missions was commonplace.

It was a good approach, although obviously one that wouldn’t help Will at this point. Ethan had picked the lock on their cuffs and promptly gotten as far away from Will as he could without leaving the path. Will tried not to care.

They slogged through the snow without further incident, and Will was thrilled to see the helicopter at last.

“Hey, Stickell,” Jane called when they were a reasonable distance away. “Ethan has amnesia and is getting back the last decade in little chronological bits. Can you please tell him we’re not going to stab him in the back?”

“Jesus, Ethan, how does all the weird-ass shit get stuck to you?” Luther said, not missing a beat. “I thought I was the disreputable one.”

“I only promised I’d still think of you that way,” Ethan replied, stepping in close. “Don’t move.”

Will bit his lips trying not to laugh as Ethan pinched Luther’s cheeks, tugged his nose, and pulled his ears. 

Luther bore it stoically, then said, “You’re lucky I like you, man.” 

Ethan finished with a brisk rub across Luther’s bald scalp. Luther snorted and knocked his hand away, and Will saw Ethan finally relax.

“Get in the fucking helicopter, Ethan,” Luther said, and shoved him at the door. “They’re your team, I’m me, Declan’s the pilot, and you have amnesia.”

Will climbed into the back after Jane, and ended up sitting across from Ethan. Declan, clueless, called back a friendly greeting over the sound of the blades spinning up. Will watched Ethan’s brow wrinkle slightly, and concluded he hadn’t made it to the 2006 Rabbit’s Foot mission yet.

Benji was typing away at the laptop. Jane fiddled with her headset, and started talking. Benji’s head snapped up to look at her, then he nodded, glanced at Ethan for a long moment, and went back to work.

* * *

An hour later, Will staggered into their safehouse. 

Benji was going around opening the cupboards, which he insisted was the best part of new places. "Oh, look, there's vodka!"

"It's a Russian safehouse; there's always vodka."

"What are we going to do, anyway, play a drinking game?"

"I like Never Have I Ever."

Luther snorted. "Hell no. Ethan would be dead on the floor in five minutes flat."

"Hey," Ethan protested.

"Really, you're doubting me on this? Okay – never have I ever blown up a helicopter inside the Chunnel; Ethan takes a shot. Never have I ever base-jumped off a skyscraper; Ethan–"

"To be fair, I would also have to drink on that one," Jane put in.

"–takes a shot. Never have I ever driven a car off a 10-story drop–"

"I don’t remember doing that.”

“You will,” Will and Jane said together.

“And I’m sure I had a good reason,” Ethan continued smoothly. “So that’s out, but there's still vodka."

There was a long pause. "Poker and shots?" Jane suggested, holding up a deck of cards. Declan grinned.

Benji grabbed the bottle and a seat, and Declan went for glasses. Jane began shuffling showily, telling the story of her stint undercover in Vegas on the trail of a terrorist-funding human trafficking ring, which had turned out to be dabbling in mind control experiments. 

Ethan shouldn’t be drinking at all with the mystery drug in his system, and Will was about to collapse now that the adrenaline was wearing off. 

"This is a really bad idea," Will said. The words were muffled by his hands, which had been covering his face ever since Declan started juggling the glasses on his way back to the table. 

No one paid him the slightest bit of attention.

* * *

Will startled awake on a sharp breath. The nightmare lingered, vague but chilling. Dark tunnels and unfriendly friends were not a good combination. He sat up and braced his elbows on his knees, rubbing at his face. From the way his heart pounded, Will knew there was no point lying down again for a while.

From this new angle in his nest of blankets on the couch, Will noticed lamplight seeping under the kitchen door. He wrapped the bottom blanket around his shoulders, keeping his body heat close, and stood up.

Will stepped carefully to avoid waking anyone lucky enough not to share his nightmares, but thanks to the old and creaky floor, he was far from silent. The lone figure at the kitchen table was watching him as he opened the door.

“Ethan?” Will asked, squinting blearily in the light.

"Hey," Ethan said, as Will's eyes adjusted. Ethan was sitting at the table with the remnants of the card game, rolling a discarded coin over his knuckles.

Will made his way over to the table and sat. He was unsure of his welcome, but huddling under this blanket with Ethan across the table was far better than just staring at the dark ceiling, resenting his insomnia. 

Ethan looked tired. "Can't sleep?" Will asked.

Ethan shook his head, and gestured vaguely at his temple. "Too much going on up here. You?"

"Bad dreams," Will said. 

He glanced at the wall clock, but Ethan said, "Don’t try to do math, Will. The drug wore off about an hour ago." 

This cut Will off mid-calculation, and earned his sleep-deprived gratitude. "Oh. Good. It was nice to meet you again, but I think I’ve hit my quota for a lifetime."

Ethan showed a hint of a smile. "You're lucky I didn't shoot you.” He paused. “I almost shot Claire, the first time around."

Will went still. Ethan rarely talked about himself, but he especially never mentioned Prague.

"I woke up from a bad dream then, too," Ethan continued. “Claire came back to the safehouse. I thought she was dead, and I was on edge….” He shook his head. “Not sure trusting me was your best call. I thought up a lot of ways to kill you, if I needed to.”

Will had guessed as much. "But you didn't. That's what matters."

Ethan was shaking his head before Will even finished speaking. "I've lost too many friends already. _That's_ what matters."

Will had never seen Ethan look sad without also looking angry, or determined. Now there was just...loss. Pure and simple, nothing to do about it. There was no one left to defeat; all the plots were foiled. Only the pain remained.

Will stood up from the table, and fetched two clean glasses from the cupboard. Back at the table, he poured them each a generous amount from the surviving vodka in the bottle.

Ethan watched him all the while. Will wasn’t sure how to read his expression, but it wasn’t happy. He wondered what Ethan expected from him; he wasn’t sure it mattered. Ethan was trusting him with this, and all Will wanted was for Ethan not to feel wary about that. Not now, not ever.

“I’m sorry about your friends, Ethan,” Will said quietly, and raised his glass in their honor. Ethan’s guard eased fractionally as he toasted back; Will savored the sharp, clean burn of the vodka on his tongue.

Ethan was staring down at his glass still. His fingers went white-knuckled around it as he continued in a slow, deliberate voice. "Jack was first, then Hannah, and Sarah. Jim killed Claire, and I killed Jim. My whole team died, in the end. We were close – a lot of missions together before Prague. Jim recruited me into the IMF, and Jack and I had been friends for years, all the way back to the Farm." He circled his glass on the table, and threw back the remainder in one hard swallow. "But Claire – Claire's the one I keep thinking about. I was in love with her, you know."

Will froze in the middle of reaching for the vodka to refill Ethan's glass.

"Claire – she was married to Jim. But I fell in love with her, and I felt...incredibly guilty about it." Ethan huffed a wry laugh. "She was beautiful, but it wasn’t that. You don’t get into the IMF just by being beautiful. Claire was clever; she had a better eye for people than anyone I’ve ever met, and she could be a real piece of work sometimes – spoiled, used to getting her way. Most people, men and women both, would just offer up what she wanted on a platter, because of the way she looked or asked or smiled, but Claire still knew every trick in the book to get a mark on her side and keep them there. If they didn’t offer, she would figure out a way to make them want to."

Will kept his silence. He knew how valuable – and how dangerous – operatives with that kind of skill could be. He wasn’t sure why Ethan was telling him any of this; but if Ethan wanted to talk, Will would listen.

"Even knowing that, even after everything she did, everything that happened, I'm still in love with her. I'm like that. Once that switch gets flipped, it doesn't go back. Claire. Nyah. Julia. Reliving all of that today–" Ethan reached out to pour a second round.

Will drank deeply, trying to numb the ache in his chest. 

“I’m glad you were there.”

Will raised his eyebrows, more than a little surprised. He wouldn’t expect Ethan to want anyone there for an experience like that.

Ethan leveled a serious look at him. “That drug – it was like getting repeated electric shocks in the form of flashbacks to my strongest memories, and then fumbling my way through catching up on the little things in between spikes. I may not have wanted you there at the time, because I didn’t know who you were, but looking back – _I’m_ glad, right here and now, that you were. It would have been worse alone. It would have been worse with any other person.” Ethan paused, and laughed. It sounded bitter in the dark kitchen. “You know all my secrets.”

“Ethan,” Will said, but Ethan wasn’t looking at him. Will reached out and wrapped his hand around Ethan’s wrist, resting on the table between them. Ethan’s head snapped up to meet his gaze. "I'll keep them, as long as you need me to. I promise."

He held the eye contact until Ethan glanced away, jaw clenching, and turned his wrist in Will’s grasp. Will let go, but before he could pull away entirely, Ethan clasped Will’s arm in a mirror image of Will’s own grip, hanging on tight.

This seemed to be all Ethan wanted, because he fell into silence, and looked out the window. Light was dawning, the purple-blue of the snow turning pink and gold between the shadows of the trees. 

Ethan's desperate grip slowly eased, and the silence settled into something comfortable. Will found himself unable to stop looking at Ethan, with the dawn light catching his face. 

He thought about what he’d told Cinnamon in DC. This wasn’t simply a crush, and he couldn’t pretend otherwise, not to himself. It wasn’t just physical; it wasn't just being on the team together. Jane was gorgeous, and Will had admired her more than once. Benji was less conventionally handsome, but he was a bright and attractive man. The way Will felt about Ethan was...something else.

It was the way Will had trusted Ethan in the tunnel, when trust wasn't rational – even when Ethan hadn’t trusted back, even when Ethan was hurting him. But Will had trusted anyway, because Benji had been right: Ethan was a good man – relentlessly good, the way he was about everything. Ethan didn’t do half-measures, didn’t hold himself back the way Will did.

Will wanted that, wanted to be near him and to have Ethan want him there. Ethan trusted him, but Will wanted everything else, too – and he couldn't have that, because Ethan was still in love with other people. He'd already thrown himself off that cliff, and was out of reach.

All Will could do now was have his back.

Will’s line of thought – and the quiet atmosphere of the kitchen – broke as Jane shuffled through the door, stumbling into the room on a determined course to the coffee maker. Ethan gently squeezed Will’s hand before letting go and pulling back. Will released his own hold reluctantly, the skin that had grown warm from contact feeling stark and vulnerable in the aftermath of separation. 

Drawing up a smile he didn’t feel, Will turned around to watch Jane paw through the cabinets. “So, is it the vodka or the jet lag that has you up this early?”

“Oh my god, just shut up and help me find the coffee,” Jane grumbled, and Ethan laughed.

Will drank down the last of his vodka, shrugged off his blanket, and went to help.

Once they’d sorted the filter and grounds, Jane hovered by the coffeemaker like a cat at a mousehole, waiting for it to start so she could shove her mug under the drip. When Benji stumbled through the door a minute later, drawn by either the scent or sound of incipient coffee, Will started making breakfast for everyone.

He turned to check on Ethan occasionally: Ethan stared down at his glass for a while, but was pulled out of contemplation when Benji stole Will’s chair and blanket. Once, Will caught Ethan staring right at him with an odd look on his face. Will smiled reassuringly, and Ethan dredged up a tiny smile of his own.


	7. other dancers may be on the floor

Once they brought their intel home from Siberia and let Yusuf at headquarters take a crack at the encryption, it provided them with a list of Syndicate leaders and operations. While the more blatantly criminal members could be passed to local law enforcement with enough evidence to bury them, the IMF retained a lot of the more delicate – and dangerous – takedowns.

Will was glad to be busy. It kept his mind off what he’d realized in Siberia.

Shaking off his thoughts, Will slipped into their target’s office and threw the lock again behind him. The faint noise of the party downstairs dropped away completely behind the heavy wood of the door. The contrast between the local Turkish architecture outside and the traditional English decor of the office – antique furniture, dim lighting, floral brocades – was jarring. That was Stewart's style, though, both personally and professionally: he paid lip service to local culture and then indulged his own interests out of sight.

Will shook his head and pulled a lighter from his pocket, slid the mechanism out of its monogrammed sleeve, and unfolded the hidden antennae from the strike wheel. "Scanning for signals now," he said. "You did fix this thing so it doesn't beep anymore, right?"

"Affirmative. Only there's a lovely whistling sound now...I'm just kidding. Well, sort of. There might be a _bit_ of interference on the comms that’ll _sound_ like–"

Will rolled his eyes and turned his attention to the scanner, letting the chatter fade to a comforting background hum – until a noise at the door snapped Will's attention away from Benji. 

Will swore under his breath. He hadn’t even heard any footsteps; listening to Benji was no excuse for losing focus like that. "We have a visitor," he whispered, spinning to put himself behind the door – maximum cover, with options for takedown if necessary.

"Copy that," said Ethan, his voice clear and calm. Will could feel himself settle a little at the sound – which was ironic, because outside of missions, Ethan's voice usually had the _opposite_ effect on him these days.

He cocked his head to listen, and frowned. The noise at the door was still going – not the solid clink and slide of a key, but a scratchy, unsteady sound. _Lockpicks_ , he thought, his pulse kicking up again. That wasn't a visitor; that was _competition_. Will tensed; the lock clicked open, and he struck.

The intruder was shorter than he'd estimated and they grappled for a moment before he got her into an armlock – definitely female, his brain whispered, filing away details: delicate perfume, less than 5’6” even in heels, dress sequins rough against his arm. He torqued her arm further as a precaution against hypermobility, pressed his knife against her spine and whispered, "Don't make a sound."

She froze.

Into comms, he said, "Lighthouse, please advise. I’ve apprehended a thief entering the office. No sign of Stewart or the guards."

"Oh bloody hell, you're a spy," the woman whispered, the posh lilt of a British accent marred by her strained breathing. "Look, before I shut up completely, can I just say that I have no problem forgetting I saw you here? The jewels are lovely, but I really find breathing much lovelier.”

"Shit," Ethan said, and Will started to worry.

Benji wasn't far behind. "What, what is it? Who is she?"

Ethan didn't give a straight answer, of course, the bastard. He just said, "Will, put her on comms."

Will blinked in confusion. "What?"

"Put her on comms," Ethan repeated. "I recognize her voice – she's a former asset. If we can get her to cooperate, she could be very helpful."

"You have that extra earpiece in your button," Benji put in helpfully. Will resisted the urge to roll his eyes, since Benji wasn't even in the same building, and bit back a few curses directed at Ethan.

"Someone wants to talk to you," he said to the woman. She twitched in confusion, her hair tickling Will's neck. He sheathed his knife and used his free hand to transfer his comm to her ear, fumbling slightly in the dark. He slid the backup off his button and tucked it into his ear just in time to hear Ethan say silkily, "–stop meeting like this."

"Ethan!" she said, her whole body relaxing in relief. "You complete bastard, I should have known you'd show up to ruin my fun. What are you doing in Ankara? And would you tell your man to let go of me, for heaven's sake? I promise I'll play nice."

"Will, stand down," Ethan ordered. Will reluctantly released the armlock and stepped back. He kept his hand close to his knife, just in case. Ethan continued, a touch of irony coloring his voice as he said, "William Brandt, meet Nyah Nordoff-Hall, professional jewel thief and occasional IMF freelancer."

Well, _that_ name was familiar. Apparently, when Ethan said 'former asset', he really meant 'ex-lover'. _Once that switch gets flipped, it doesn't go back._ Will’s stomach dropped, and he barely hid his reaction in time as Nyah turned to look at him, eyebrow arched haughtily. She looked exactly the same as her photo on file – which was over a decade old at this point – save for a sharp pixie haircut that made her look even more elfin and stunning. Despite his tux and several thousand dollars worth of cutting-edge espionage accessories, Will suddenly felt horribly underdressed.

“Agent Brandt,” she said, coolly. “A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Will said, and faked a smile.

“Now, what exactly am I helping you liberate, Ethan?” she said. “It's something boring like documents, isn't it?”

“We're not taking anything; we're putting something in. I'm afraid the jewelry is going to have to stay right where it is, Nyah.”

She looked supremely irritated, but not surprised. “Frame job, then? I expect to be compensated,” she said.

“For not stealing something?” Ethan asked, dry as ice.

“Consider it a consulting fee,” she shot back, but a fond smile quirked her lips for a moment. Will gritted his teeth. Oh, Jesus, were they flirting? He turned away and started scanning again. He could be professional about this. Their target was one of the heads of the Syndicate, and taking him down was critical.

“You are aware of the weight sensors Stewart purchased last week, aren't you, Nyah?”

“I had a way around that, thank you very much. You, however, are lucky he went cheap and bought sensors that only pick up deficit weight.”

“Who do you think sold him the sensors?”

There, the signal was coming from the bookshelves. See? Totally professional.

“It looks like the access panel is in the bookcases,” Will interrupted.

“Wonderful,” Nyah said dryly. “I don’t suppose you can narrow it down a bit?” She gestured eloquently at the floor-to-ceiling ranks of books.

“Five minutes to the guard rotation,” Ethan interjected.

“No time to check every book, got it.” Will stepped up to the shelves and examined them carefully. “Looks like it’s just been cleaned, so dust trails aren’t going to help.”

“I don’t suppose that scanner is of any use?” Nyah asked.

“It’s general only, we can’t triangulate,” Will said absently, already scanning the titles. “Maybe....” Where would a pretentious anglophile like Stewart hide a Boswell safe? 

...And when he thought about it like that, it seemed so obvious.

As if reading his mind, Ethan demanded, "What do you see?"

"Just a second," Will said. He reached up and pulled out _The Complete Sherlock Holmes_ , then felt along the shelf space underneath. An access panel popped up against his fingertips, and he grinned triumphantly when part of the shelves pulled free two sections over.

“Sherlock Holmes?” Nyah read. “How on earth did you guess that?” It was the first time she’d sounded anything like impressed since they’d met, and Will savored it.

“Well,” he said, “A guy like Stewart? He’d be lost without his Boswell.”

Ethan, to Will’s surprise, cracked up loudly. 

He got the laughter under control fast (professional as always), but Will had never heard anything quite like it from Ethan – a sharp bark of uncontrolled humor. He wished he could’ve been there to see his face. 

“Nicely done, Sailboat,” Ethan said. “Three minute ETA on the guard rotation."

“Copy that, Lighthouse.” Grinning, Will folded the antennae into the lighter and tucked the thing back into his jacket pocket. He looked up to see Nyah studying him, an enigmatic smile on her face. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, pursing her lips and erasing the expression. “Just admiring your technique. If you don't mind, I'll take the safe? Boswell combination locks are so darling.” She nudged him aside, and did something diabolical to the dial that had it popping open in less than a minute. Will pretended not to be impressed.

Will rapidly assessed the arrangement within the safe, then carefully slotted the package into a position that looked congruent with the rest of the contents. Nyah sighed in his ear. “Such a shame,” she said. “He has one of the brooches that Queen Victoria gave to her bridesmaids.” 

Will firmly closed the safe door and spun the dial back to its original position.

“This should give the police plenty of reasons to put Stewart away,” Ethan said. “You can steal the brooch from their evidence locker in a month or so.”

Nyah brightened immediately. “Oh, bravo. A consulting fee _and_ my brooch. This night isn’t turning out so badly after all.”

“Just make sure you don’t get caught,” Ethan said.

“Relax, Ethan,” she said, already crossing to the door and edging it open. “Warrants really are such a pain. I’ve made quite sure not to catch trouble with the police since your people cleared my record. Hadn’t you noticed?”

“I noticed that string of robberies at the Triple Crown stops last year.”

“Well, I had to make up for my Arsène racing poorly somehow, didn’t I?”

Will snorted. “You named your horse Arsène, but didn’t get the Boswell reference?”

“I prefer thieves to detectives, naturally,” Nyah purred. “It’s a shame; Sherlock Holmes would have made such a good criminal.”

Will opened his mouth, but Nyah abruptly raised her hand to silence him. Outside, footsteps approached, faintly audible through the door. The guard passed slowly, the sound of his boots so steady you could set a metronome to it. Will wondered how many times he’d walked this floor: four times an hour, seven hours a night, and the man had been working for Stewart since last year.... 

The footsteps faded into silence, and Nyah cracked the door, her eyes flickering expertly to check for observers. Will slipped out the door in her wake, and they turned left - following the guard, but the staircase they needed was in that direction. Nyah led the way, her petite heels utterly silent even on the tiled mosaic floor, and Will felt a little better about not hearing her coming.

He did a much worse job of keeping his shoes quiet, but when Nyah glared at Will at the sound of boot heels, he shook his head and mouthed, “Not me.”

They both turned to look down the hall. The footsteps came closer.

“He’s coming back. Why is he coming back?” Will whispered.

“Stop _thinking_ ,” Nyah hissed, dragging him into an alcove. It was too narrow to hold them both, and Will was about to say so when Nyah draped her arms around his neck and pulled him into a kiss.

“Status report,” Ethan barked over the comms.

Will slid his mouth sideways to whisper, “Just pulling the old Drunken Makeout routine,” into Nyah’s earpiece. The move was a cliche, but it was a cliche for a reason: drunk, horny people ended up in a lot of awkward places looking for privacy, and he couldn’t think of a bored guard in the world who wouldn’t sympathize. Normally, he kind of enjoyed playing the part, but this time was awkward on so many levels.

“Fine. Keep me updated,” Ethan gritted out, sounding unusually annoyed. 

Will couldn't help rolling his eyes as he pulled back to kiss Nyah on the lips. Ethan sounded more irritated about someone kissing his ex than he had earlier about an unknown intruder on their op.

Unfortunately, Nyah kissed with her eyes open. She hummed amusedly into the kiss, and when Will broke off to nuzzle along her jaw, embarrassed at getting caught, she whispered, “Ethan, stop backseat driving. You're a menace.”

“He's a menace when he actually drives,” Benji muttered.

“You should see her driving,” Ethan said.

“Shhhhh,” Will said. The guard was moments away, and Nyah was shaking with suppressed laughter. Which, okay, was within the range of her character, but not really helping Will’s composure. He slid back into the kiss to muffle his own inclination to laugh hysterically just as the guard’s footsteps came to a sudden halt.

“Hey! This area’s off limits,” the guard snapped, and Will relaxed at the bored annoyance in his voice. Clearly, this had happened before.

Right on cue, Nyah let loose a perfect embarrassed squeak, and clutched the top of her green dress. She’d somehow slipped the straps off her shoulders when Will wasn’t paying attention, and looked thoroughly disheveled. Will immediately took up the part of protective boyfriend, shielding her with his body and glaring back at the guard. 

“Hey, man, what the hell?” he snapped. “A little privacy?”

The guard snorted. “Seems to me you’ve had too much privacy. Please go back to the party now.”

Nyah laid a hand on Will’s arm and said, in her poshest tones, “Yes, of course. Terribly sorry. Come along, darling, let’s find some more wine.” She wavered convincingly on her heels as she tugged him towards the stairs. From there, it was an easy escape to their cars, and they were home free. 

Except when Will dug into his pocket for his keys, they were gone.

“Looking for these?” Nyah asked, dangling them in his peripheral vision. Of course, Will thought resignedly. Master thief. “I didn’t want you leaving without me. I might get lost following you to your safehouse. Tailing someone at night is such a bore, anyway.”

“Very understandable,” Will said gravely, and clicked his radio on again. “Lighthouse, I’m bringing a guest. Might want to make sure the place is presentable.” 

To his mild disappointment, Ethan didn’t protest, just sighed heavily. “Copy that, Sailboat.”

Will turned back to Nyah and made a sweeping gesture towards the car. “Your chariot, milady.”

Nyah smirked and said brightly, “I’ll drive.”

Ethan had been right: Nyah was a terrifying driver. Totally safe, as it turned out, but like Ethan, she was prone to accelerating straight towards danger before dodging neatly away – and she had an additional tendency to laugh at Will’s white-knuckled grip on the seat. 

The narrow streets in Ankara did not help. At all.

They made it to the safehouse with everything intact – save for Will’s pride – and Benji greeted them at the base of the narrow staircase to collect their comms. And possibly to get some gossip, Will wasn’t sure. Benji had a gleam, anyway.

"This is Benji," Will said. "Benji; Nyah."

"Hello," Benji said, and Nyah smiled at him.

"Lovely earpiece," she said, handing it over. "Your work?"

"Um, yes, actually. Thank you." Benji looked a bit flustered. Will sighed. Was Nyah going to flirt with everyone on his team?

"Shall we?" Will said, and led the way upstairs.

He peeled off to the side once through the doorway, aiming to keep out of the way and out of notice for the inevitable confrontation. Ethan still shot him a glance, eyes flicking up and down before lingering on his collar, which Will belatedly realized was still rumpled from his interlude with Nyah. He straightened it hastily, and Ethan went poker-faced just as Nyah sashayed through the door behind Benji.

Ethan and Nyah squared off, still a good distance apart, and tension hung in the air as the two sized each other up. 

Will leaned his weight back into the tiny kitchen counter and eyed them carefully. He didn’t think this would get ugly, but you never knew with exes. That, Will told himself, was the only reason he was watching. He just wanted to be prepared. Really.

 _Once that switch gets flipped, it doesn't go back._ Will hid his internal flinch. Jesus, he hated his brain sometimes. It never let him forget.

"Well,” Benji said, looking around the room. "It was nice to meet you. I've got to–" He gestured in the direction of some equipment through the door to the next room, and escaped.

Ethan kept the poker face for a few more seconds, then grinned at Nyah. She smiled back warmly, and Will's heart sank. 

"Hello, Ethan," she said. “I heard you went to prison. I’m insulted you didn’t call me.”

“I had it covered,” he said, as she stepped in for a hug. Ethan hugged her back solidly, closing his eyes and softening his smile. Seeing Ethan smiling, arms wrapped around someone (someone _else_ ) made a pit open in Will’s stomach.

“I’m sorry about Julia,” Nyah said quietly, muffled into Ethan’s shoulder.

And Will suddenly had no excuse to be there. He already felt like a third wheel, and this was–

"Are we on schedule for the police tip-off?" he asked abruptly.

Ethan glanced up, and eased out of the hug. "Jane's on her way back. She got our ambitious lieutenant practically begging to take down Stewart, and Benji should be putting him into play now."

"Right. Good. I'll check in with Benji." Will gestured toward the door, realized he looked exactly like Benji had a moment ago, and retreated as fast as he could.

Benji was on top of things, and Will certainly wasn’t any help, since he kept getting distracted by every murmur of sound that drifted in from the other room. He gave Benji’s shoulder a friendly squeeze, and exited the sliding doors to the balcony.

Outside, the night breeze masked all other sounds. Will stared over the city. Their room had an excellent view of the Kocatepe Mosque, but all his attempts to review what he knew of its history and architecture gave way to thoughts of the room he’d left behind.

He was such an idiot. Fine, so he had this, this...thing for Ethan, but Will held no claim on him. He had no chance with him. This envy, this anger he felt toward Nyah – and, even more illogically, Julia – was pointless. It was ridiculous. He knew better. There was no reason to covet what they had, because it just wasn't an option for Will.

He repeated this thought to himself, but the sick feeling of resentment still filled his stomach.

“There you are,” Nyah said from behind him. _Jesus_ , she was quiet. Maybe Ethan had learned it from her.

"Nyah," he said, as she moved to lean against the railing beside Will. They were probably on a first-name basis after pretending to make out earlier. "Thanks for the help tonight."

"I could have done without the armlock, but the rest was good fun.” Nyah tossed something to him, and Will snapped up a hand just in time to catch his car keys. "Ethan's never boring."

"Never that," Will agreed fondly.

Nyah had taken a bloom from the bouquet inside, and began spinning it dexterously between her fingers. "It's a shame things didn't work out between us. But we were absolutely dreadful at trusting each other once the shooting stopped."

Will's brow wrinkled. "He must have trusted you. You were in love."

Nyah's expression flickered. Her fingers tightened on the flower stem, and she said, "A spy, trust a thief? I think you could make a good joke out of that."

"That's not all there is to Ethan. I doubt that's all there is to you, either," Will said firmly.

Her eyes softened. "No, perhaps not." She began twirled the flower between her fingers in the opposite direction, examining Will. “You watch things quite carefully, don't you?”

“I suppose,” Will said, not sure where she was going with this.

“Then tell me, Will," she said, "Ethan – is he happy, do you think?"

That was the last thing he'd expected her to say. "Why ask me? You know him well enough to judge for yourself."

She flicked her eyes sideways at him. "He's your teammate," she said, like it was obvious and he was being a moron on purpose just to irritate her. “Ethan and I just saved the world together once."

Will's own experience saving the world with Ethan Hunt had given him a pretty good idea of the man's character, but she was right; it wasn't everything. “Why ask at all?” he asked, still wary of her angle.

“Just because I couldn't live my life with Ethan doesn't mean I don't care,” Nyah said.

She sounded defensive, and that of all things convinced Will that she was honestly worried. Will imagined feeling the way he did about Ethan, without being there to keep an eye on him, and his lingering envy of Nyah faded. In a way, Nyah was his mirror – Will had no hope of having Ethan's love, but he got to have Ethan here beside him; Nyah, like Julia, had his love, but couldn't share his life.

Finding an honest answer to her question, he decided, was the least he could do.

Will puffed out a breath, and thought about Ethan in the safehouse kitchen in Siberia, thought of the aching sorrow he'd let Will see. Then he thought about the way Ethan laughed these days, easy and open, trusting his team. "I think he is. It's hard to tell, sometimes." He paused, and added quietly, "I _hope_ he is."

Nyah nodded. "I thought so. He’s smiling more – that real one, not the idiotic grin he puts on for show. I think this team is good for him."

"Us?"

“Mmm. Jane came back while you were out here. She and Benji, they both make him smile. And _you_ make him laugh.” Nyah turned, leaning her back into the railing, and smiled enigmatically. “Keep it up, won't you? I do like to be sure he's properly looked after.”

"I'll try," Will promised. He wondered if anyone looked after her, and said, "I guess I should tell you to be good and not get arrested, right?"

“Oh, darling, don't worry. I’m the best there is,” Nyah said, and strode back into the suite.

She was gone by the time Will made it inside. She’d stolen the flower away with her.


	8. rhythm starts to play

Will was mostly relieved when his job didn’t ruin Christmas again. His sister had spent the month of December poorly hiding her anxiety over the odds of Will leaving on a last-minute 'business trip' – as had happened every other major holiday this year – through a pattern of steadily more frequent phone calls. Luckily for Emily and her valid desire for backup, he didn’t receive a mission until the day after. 

It was good to see Em, at least, since her leaves and his schedule didn't line up very often. Will felt guilty sometimes that she got the brunt of their parents’ disapproval due to her military career – his job was frequently even more dangerous than hers, and if they knew he'd fallen for his male teammate, he'd probably be disowned – but his work was so classified that Will couldn't even talk about what his coworkers' names were, much less how he felt about them. 

He'd like to say it was the job that kept him in practice for hiding things he didn’t want people to see, but it was his childhood that had given him that skill in the first place.

The mission came disguised as a late Christmas card from one Phillipe Douchette in New Orleans. (The alias was one of Ethan’s oldest, and in Will’s opinion, his most hilarious.) The card was the audio kind which blared a tinny version of a carol as you opened it. This one played “Let It Snow,” and Will had a whole thirty seconds to regret telling Ethan that _Die Hard_ was his favorite Christmas movie before the real message started.

It was a good holiday mission. The next Syndicate member on the list was a corrupt Brazilian businessman involved in the 2016 Olympics planning and a significant amount of blackmailing – which, after some translation, meant sunshine and New Year’s Eve in Rio.

The flight was smooth, customs was friendly, and his taxi driver was reasonably sane. Will opened the suite door in a remarkably cheerful mood, to the familiar sound of Benji’s voice.

“–those barefoot running shoes, with the separate toes? The toes are a bit weird, really, though I suppose they’re the _point_ and – anyway, my sister wanted a pair for Christmas, which made me think, so I modified the polymer we use for the masks and reinforced it with some of those graphene compounds we stole from – oh, hmm, that’s still classified, isn’t it? The point is, they’re sort of like wearing steel-toed boots, except you look like you’re barefoot, so you can wear them with heels.”

Jane stared at Benji for a long moment, until he ventured, “I...call them hobbit feet? And, I made you a pair, happy Christmas?”

The words broke her stare, and she smiled slowly at him, ending up somewhere between a shit-eating grin and the kind of smile more suited to her Venus persona. She said fervently, “Benji...best Christmas present _ever_.”

Will leaned in the doorframe, watching the scene as Jane tackled the grinning Benji in a brief hug, before sitting down to excitedly examine the hobbit feet. Ethan was sitting in an armchair, looking amused. He caught sight of Will first, and his face lit in a bright smile. Will returned the smile, helplessly.

This wasn’t going away. He knew that now. But Ethan was happy, and Will could let himself just enjoy the warmth of that, and of having all his favorite people in one place.

“Merry Christmas, everyone,” he called out. Jane and Benji turned around with a matching set of grins. “Sorry, I didn’t get you any presents.”

Jane clutched at her chest. “I can’t believe you. Benji is officially my favorite now,” she said, but her words were somewhat contradicted by the way she got up and hugged Will.

"I didn't get you anything, either," Benji admitted, nudging Jane aside and slinging his arm around Will's shoulders for a brief hug of his own.

“I guess that card from Ethan is all I’m getting this year,” Will sighed, leaning into Benji for a moment longer than he should. The card had destroyed itself, anyway.

Benji exchanged a look with Jane. “I didn’t get a card. Did you get a card? Should we be insulted?”

“If we could get the briefing started,” Ethan interrupted, “I have lots of presents from the IMF for good little agents who take down Syndicate members.”

Jane and Benji shuffled back to the couch and sat. Will set down his bag and dropped into the chair across from Ethan.

“Our target’s name is Lino Ferro,” Ethan explained, pulling up a photo. “He’s a Brazilian railroad tycoon, who supplements his income and influence with a productive blackmail racket.”

Jane wrinkled her nose. “I hate blackmailers.”

“You and Benji will be infiltrating his exclusive New Year’s Eve party. We were only able to acquire one admission; Jane, you get to be a prospective investor, interested in the 2016 Olympics.”

“Please tell me I’m not a waiter,” Benji said, resigned.

Ethan grinned. “You’re not a waiter.”

Benji straightened. “Really?”

“Really. Ferro has some very next-gen cyber security, all based out of his penthouse where the party is being held. You’ll need special tech to crack it. That’s where this man comes in.” Ethan pulled up a photo of a man with a dramatic Eurotrash hairstyle. “Ferro is a fan of DJ Dean Funk, and hired him for the party. Benji, you’ll double him, and work with headquarters to break his system under cover of the DJ equipment.”

“‘DJ Dean Funk’? Really?” Jane said.

“So, we’re taking the acoustic cryptanalysis for a spin _and_ I get to wear a mask? Brilliant!”

“Ferro keeps his blackmail material – and his data on the Syndicate – in a safe built into one car of a heavily-guarded train. He keeps the car rotating through a string of seven, with armed guards on every one except the safe car, because he apparently doesn’t trust his men enough to let them near the safe. Cameras cover the area around the car, eliminating an air approach. Each car is shielded from scanning equipment, and the train itself is routed randomly around the country. And finally, Ferro has a burn switch installed, which he can activate remotely should anyone or anything set off the alarms.”

Jane picks up the thread. “Benji and I flew in yesterday and placed a tracker on one of the guards, so we have a location for the train. And I called in Declan for backup. Trust me, he’s great with trains,” she explained, at Will’s questioning look. “But that won’t get us access, and we don’t know which car is the target.”

Benji frowned at the schematics. “Honestly, I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to give you enough time to crack the safe. It’s possible, but this model is time-consuming, especially factoring in the unsteadiness of a railcar. I’d estimate maybe six hours? With all the external security, your odds of evading notice for that long are...not good.”

“Plus, no land approach, and no air approach either,” Jane said. “That leaves...nothing? Water?”

Ethan looked mischievous, which Will found both alarming, and alarmingly attractive. _Down, boy._ He focused, and summed up, “So we can’t come at it from alongside. There are anti-aircraft defenses in addition to the guards, so we can’t come from above. We can’t crack the safe – which we can’t even get to in the first place – on the move, but we also can’t risk stopping the train or removing the safe from the train because of the burn switch. And we can’t deactivate the burn switch without cracking the safe – which we can’t get to, and can’t crack.”

Ethan smiled like a madman as Will’s enumeration of the impossibilities lengthened. Benji cracked first. 

“Well, I’m stumped. How the hell are we going to pull this off?”

* * *

The thing about Ethan’s plan, Will thought, was that his explanation really hadn’t covered how terrifying the execution would be.

Then again, Will was the crazy person who’d agreed to it in the first place. It was really all his own fault that he was currently lying on (okay, _between_ ) the railroad tracks like a bad cliche, covered with specially-designed camouflage fabric, knowing there was a train hurtling towards this very spot. 

Ethan was about fifty feet down the grade, similarly situated. They were both on – well, Benji had called them creepers, but they resembled a cross between a full-body mechanic’s roller, a luge, and a funicular. 

“Benji, confirm target is the fourth car,” Will heard Ethan say calmly over the radio.

“Yes, the fourth. Engine, then one, two, three, target is four,” Benji replied.

 _We’ll just steal the whole train car, he said_ , Will thought sarcastically, as the train appeared around the bend downhill. _Aren’t we lucky this train has so much ground clearance, he said_.

And then the train thundered overhead, and there was no more time for thought. 

His and Ethan’s magnetic grapples deployed, catching the back end of the third car and the front edge of the fifth respectively. Will braced himself as the creepers began to move, rattling along between the rails. The winch slowly increased resistance on the unspooling cable line until they matched speeds with the train, and Will hit the switch that began to reel them in. 

He'd worried when they tested the creepers that their rattling would alert the guards, but Ethan had assured him it wouldn't be a problem. As soon as Will passed under the rear car, he understood what Ethan meant: the sound of the wheels was deafening, and the occasional shriek of metal on metal whenever they hit a curve kicked Will's adrenaline even higher. Once the cable fully retracted, Will gladly clambered up between the third and fourth boxcars, and immediately uncoupled the cars. One boxcar back, Ethan did the same between the fourth and fifth cars.

The plan took advantage of three weaknesses in the train’s security – first, that there were no cameras underneath or between the cars; second, that Ferro’s paranoia left the safe car unmanned; and third, that the system assumed getting _inside_ the train was the goal.

“In position,” Will reported, perched swaying between cars.

“I’ve attached the transmitters, Benji,” Ethan said. “Start cloning the signals.”

“On it,” Benji replied, party noise filtering in from the background. Benji had borrowed some sort of algorithm from Yusuf to manage the DJing while he ‘did important spy things’; the music didn’t sound too bad.

Will fastened one end of a specially designed cable to the near hitch of the third car. He took care to minimize the noise; it was crucial that none of the guards heard or suspected anything.

“Okay,” Benji said in Will’s ear, “I have control of the cameras. The duplicate tracker is broadcasting from the fifth car, and the real tracker is jammed. You have a go.”

“Roger that,” Will confirmed. “Cable in place, ready to send,” he said, and leaned out from the shelter of the train car. Wind whipped wildly through his hair as he carefully held the cable end – attached to something rather like a small parachute – out of the wind.

“Ready to receive,” Ethan said. 

Will brought his arm around and let go. 

The miniature parachute caught the wind, snapping it and the cable rapidly down the side of the boxcar. Ethan snatched it from the air and ducked out of Will’s line of sight. Seconds later, he said “Rear hook in place. I’m going down to apply the chemical brake.”

The space between Will’s car and the uncoupled target car had already grown considerably, thanks to the uphill slope of the tracks. The fifth car, however, was moving at the same speed as the target, and needed a bit more help. The spray Ethan had would increase friction, acting as a braking mechanism to slow it down.

Declan’s voice came over the earpiece as Will waited. “I have you at two minutes out, based on the trackers. Everything according to plan?”

Will eyed the distance between his car and the target. “I’ve hit the minimum on my end. Ethan?”

“It’s gonna be close,” Ethan said. “Greenlight it.”

Typical. Will bit back a grin, and Declan said “Copy that, fearless leader,” with high levels of dry resignation. 

Will leaned around the corner of the boxcar to watch their approach to the upcoming junction. The diverging tracks sloped to his right, angling down the hill their train was currently climbing.

He was looking, but Declan made the switchover too smoothly for Will to follow. He definitely caught the whoop of triumph over the comms as Declan successfully triggered the switch just before and just after the target, turning that car and no other onto the diverging track. The rest of Ferro’s train continued on the main line, and Will smiled as he watched the target car ease away from them, momentum carrying it downhill to the waiting Declan.

“Package headed your way, D,” he said.

“Excellent,” Declan said, and clicked off the line.

Ethan, still under the fifth car – now actually fourth in the train – said, “Administering the counteragent now.” 

The second chemical neutralized the friction-inducing compound, returning wheel performance to normal parameters. Will wrestled the winch into place on the cable which now hung straight between his car and Ethan’s. Once he got it working on closing the gap left by the stolen car, he settled in to wait. 

Watching the end of Ethan’s tow line, stretching taut from the magnetic grapple to where it disappeared under the car, Will frowned and checked his watch. Ethan should have been done spraying the wheels by now.

The space between cars was down to a quarter of the starting distance when a crackle echoed across the comms. “Slight problem,” Ethan said.

 _Shit_. Will came to full alert. 

“My line won’t retract. I’m going to try – _fuck_!”

Will didn’t need the comms to hear a piercing shriek echo from Ethan’s position, then settle into a rhythmic banging.

A _loud_ , rhythmic banging.

Something had gone terribly wrong.

The magnetic clamp suddenly released; Will made an aborted, instinctive movement to grab the disappearing end, and said “Ethan!” in a low, harsh voice. The banging noise receded into the distance on the tracks behind them.

Ethan’s strained voice came over the comm line. “My creeper is gone. Line jammed, then one wheel caught some track debris. I cut both loose to stop the noise. Will, I could use a lift, rear end of the car.”

Will translated: Ethan was clinging by his fingertips to the undercarriage of that train car, with nothing between him and the track flying by at high speed, and nothing between him and certain death but Will.

“On my way,” Will said. 

The winch was only seconds away from closing the two cars, but they stretched painfully. Will locked the coupling together as fast as he could, disengaged the winch and cable, and scrambled down to his own creeper on the tracks.

“Will, Ethan’s position is toward the back of his car, yeah? Ethan, don’t say anything,” Benji suddenly broke in. “We have a tourist at the rear exit.”

“Roger that,” Will said. “Is he there because of the noise?”

A tense silence followed. “No, looks like a smoker,” Benji said finally. “Just watch the volume, guys.”

“Great. Ethan, I’m just going to assume you heard all of that and are trying to keep quiet, and not that you’ve fallen to your death,” Will said, and set his tow line unreeling as fast as he could.

He allowed himself a half-second of relief as Ethan came into view above him. Will hit the line controls and slid into place precisely below Ethan. Mindful of the smoker, Will stayed silent and pressed a careful hand to Ethan’s back, between his shoulder blades. He could feel the early tremors of muscle fatigue even over the train’s vibrations.

Ethan threw a glance over his shoulder to gauge the position of the creeper, then shifted his left hand’s grip toward the center of his body. He immediately dropped his right hand back and down in a breathtaking tight twist. 

The creeper was designed to fit under the user’s body, leaving no surface for Ethan to brace against but Will himself. Will caught Ethan’s wrist and guided his palm to rest squarely on Will’s shoulder. Using this as his foundation, Ethan unhooked his right leg from the undercarriage to hang sideways. He lowered his knee carefully to Will’s thigh – mildly uncomfortable, but necessary – and repeated the maneuver with his left leg. Finally, he let go of the train, bracing with his right hand as he found Will’s opposite shoulder with his left, and lowered himself all the way down.

Ethan lay full-length on Will: thighs balancing atop his, chest and hips pressing squarely down with all of Ethan’s weight. His palms were still braced across the front of Will’s shoulders, fingers wrapping around the joint. 

Will felt Ethan shift, hand lifting and reaching for the creeper controls. Will tightened his hand, still on Ethan’s wrist, and said “Benji?” quietly into the comm.

“Smoker is headed back inside...now,” Benji replied, and Will felt Ethan’s sigh of relief as movement against his chest and warm breath on his neck. He let go of Ethan’s wrist and reached up to shield the back of Ethan’s head as Ethan let the line free. 

When they cleared the end of the train, Will hit the grapple’s release and engaged the brake. It wasn’t a very powerful mechanism – by design; no safety belt plus the laws of inertia equaled a strong brake on this thing being a _terrible_ idea – so it was going to be some time before they coasted to a stop.

Will had nothing to distract his mind away from his body. His heart was pounding with adrenaline and nothing to do with it but hold still. Ethan was still catching his breath, and gasps against the side of his neck in combination with a warm body holding Will down was not helping his adrenaline situation. Will gritted his teeth and told his body firmly that it was not allowed to enjoy hurtling down a railroad track on a mutated luge just because Ethan Hunt was there.

What he couldn’t manage, however, was to move the hand he still held curled protectively around Ethan’s head. 

Once they slowed enough that he could do it without losing a foot, Will stuck his leg out to drag along the rail, hastening them to a stop. As they jolted into stillness, Ethan shifted, one leg falling into the space left between Will’s thighs by his braking maneuver.

Will sucked in a breath, every nerve in his body lighting up at the completely innocent but utterly stimulating movement, before Ethan’s knee braced on the frame to ease his weight from Will. 

He pulled back – only to be stopped by Will’s hand, still tangled in his hair.

For a long moment, Ethan just looked at him, face close. “You okay?” he asked. He must have mistaken the noise for pain.

“Fine,” Will said. Neither of them moved. “You okay?” he added, after a while.

“I’m good,” Ethan said, smiling, and tilted his head, leaning down again.

Will’s hand tightened its grip, deliberately, for the first time. “What’s all that blood from, then?” he asked, voice calm.

Ethan pulled back slightly and reached up to touch the side of his head, looking surprised when it came away bloody. “Must’ve caught some debris,” he said. He hesitated, then knelt up.

Will’s hand dropped away, but he followed Ethan to sitting. “Let me take a look,” he said.

“It’s just that head wounds bleed a lot.”

“Ethan,” Will said, quellingly, and Ethan sighed but let Will turn his head to examine the injury. 

Will kept his touch light and gentle, and brief. It didn’t look too serious; lots of blood, but the shallow cut was already clotting, and Ethan didn’t show any symptoms of concussion. 

“Okay,” he concluded. “But you’re letting me clean that when we get back.”

Ethan nodded, then stood and offered Will a hand up. “Benji?” he asked, tapping his comm with a frown. “Can we get a location on Declan?”

There was a long silence. 

“Benji’s a little occupied at the moment,” Jane said, sounding horribly amused. “Turns out our host had an ulterior motive for hiring this DJ. Ferro is currently flirting with Benji like mad; Benji’s flirting back to distract Ferro from the fact that he just hacked the train security system. We’ve dropped you off his comm to cut down on interruptions.”

Declan said, “Benji’s not half bad at this, actually.”

“I think it’s the mask,” Jane said thoughtfully.

Ethan and Will looked at each other. “I thought I got to seduce the next rich guy,” Will said, and Ethan huffed a laugh.

“Well, we won’t get the full story until we make the rendezvous,” Ethan said. “Jane, make sure Benji doesn’t erase the surveillance before we get there. We’ll need it to make a full accounting of the night’s events for our report.”

“Oh, sure, for the report,” Jane said, sounding delighted. “It’ll be my pleasure.”

Will added, “And make sure the guy doesn’t stick around long enough to kiss Benji at midnight. The masks still aren’t up to that kind of dynamic contact.”

“Speaking of midnight kisses, lads, I’ll be collecting some ‘dynamic contact’ from the both of you once you get here,” Declan declared.

Ethan and Will exchanged glances.

“Walk slower?” Will suggested.

“Much slower,” Ethan agreed.

“It’ll still be midnight somewhere!” Declan said.

They went slower anyway. It was a beautiful night, they’d stolen a train, and Will didn’t mind the company one bit.


	9. head keeps spinnin'

During Will's downtime after the Rio mission, Adam shanghaied him for an all-hands-on-deck data-crunching session. Adam wouldn't ask if he didn't need the help, and Will owed him a favor or three, so he said yes.

It wouldn't have been a problem, except an opportunity for another Syndicate takedown popped up out of nowhere, and the team deployed at once. Will, neck-deep in analysis, hadn't even received notice of the mission until the plane was an hour out.

In a situation like that, it was IMF policy to proceed without the missing requested team member. The "should you choose to accept it" part of the spiel was actually a legitimate out, and Will's absence indicated he had declined to accept this mission. Will had refused a mission only once before, when he'd had a horrible case of the flu, but he knew how it worked.

Still, he wasn't surprised to find a message in his voicemail, time-stamped five minutes after the plane's departure time.

"Brandt, this is Ethan Hunt," Ethan began, like Will couldn't recognize his voice by now. "I hope everything is okay." There was a long pause. "Let me know if you need anything. Bye."

Okay, new fun fact about Ethan: he left awkward voice messages. Will found it incredibly endearing that Ethan – who Will knew could sweet-talk assassins and weapons dealers and madmen with bombs – had been defeated by Will's voicemail.

Will composed a brief email in reply, because even spy planes made people turn off their cell phones but gave them a wireless network: _Sorry to miss it – I was helping Adam out of a jam, didn't hear until too late. Good hunting, I'll see you when you get back._

He was jogging up the stairs to his apartment, pondering what to cook from his current odd assortment of groceries, when he felt a sharp sting at his neck. Will slapped at it instinctively, and froze.

That wasn't an insect; that was a dart.

Will pulled it out and dropped it to the ground. His mind raced, but he already felt woozy. Seconds, then. Maybe.

He lifted the phone, but before he could dial Ethan's number, hands grabbed him and knocked it from his grip.

Will struggled, of course, even with the drug slowing his reaction time and weakening his body, but darkness closed in on him, and he was lost.

* * *

"Mr. Brandt, wake up," someone said, and Will found consciousness again tied to a chair.

They kept it predictable at first – beatings and monologuing, bribes and threats. Will learned more than his kidnappers did from the experience: judging by the questions they asked, they were Syndicate, he was being held somewhere in Egypt, and there was something going down in Madagascar that Will needed to look into when he got free.

Two days into his captivity – just enough time for a flight from DC to Egypt, plus a ten hour drive, his mind whispered, and knew it had been carefully calculated by his captors, knowing Will would count the hours – they brought a fake-Ethan into the room, and pretended he was a mole.

Will knew they were lying, even before fake-Ethan blamed Will's kidnapping on revenge, for Julia and Croatia.

He played along for hours, cycling through the expected betrayal-anger-despair like the professional he was, all while counting up their mistakes in his head like a fucked up game of I Spy.

The act bought him a whole day before they shot him with a syringe full of...something. Will started to laugh over how much they'd gotten wrong: Ethan’s hands were wrong; his smile was wrong; the lack of that practical deadly grace in the way he moved was wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Amateur," Will said. "Jesus, you're a terrible Ethan Hunt," and laughed some more.

"Tell me something, Mr. Brandt," fake-Ethan began.

"Sure; your guard keeps sneaking cigarette breaks during his shift," Will said, and – what? He'd been thinking about it, because that was the one weakness he could see in the room's security, but he sure as fuck hadn't planned to mention it to his captors, so why–

Oh. The syringe.

Will's blood ran cold. "Shit," he said.

He hadn't meant to say that, either.

It must have shown on his face, because his interrogator smiled.

Will breathed, gritted his teeth, and settled in for a fight.

* * *

“Will, wake up," someone said.

Will pulled his eyes open slowly, caught confused for a moment between the sound of Ethan's voice in the dark and the touch of calloused fingers working the ties at his wrist. 

Then he remembered: Ethan wasn't really here.

“Seriously, guys? You're trying this again? It's not like it worked the first time,” he said, because apparently his uninhibited self liked to critique bad guys to their face while tied to a chair. Maybe he had more in common with Ethan than he thought. Ethan would probably do that _without_ truth serum, though.

Come to think of it, Ethan on truth serum would be pretty hilarious. Except for the part where he knew even more of IMF's dirty little secrets than Will did, and Will had worked directly with the Secretary for months.

“Or maybe I'm hallucinating,” he mused, letting his head thump back against the chair. He was probably due for a hideous drug reaction from all the shit they were pumping into him.

The fingers on his arm stilled. It was still dark – maybe they hadn't wanted to waste a mask? But they'd taken the time to get Ethan's calluses right, that odd mix of guns and rock climbing shadowed on his hands. Will couldn't blame that bit of trivia on his training – it was pure want that kept that knowledge around, storing every memory of touches and handshakes until he knew the pattern like...well, like the palm of Ethan's hand.

The man pretending to be Ethan said, “Will, I need you to listen to me. When we met you, I asked you for a pen, and you recognized what I drew. Do you remember the name?”

Adrenaline shot through the haze of pain and drugs, and shit, Will hadn't thought he had any of that left. “Cobalt,” he breathed. “You're a shitty artist, but your hand was nice and I – Ethan, shit, what are you doing here?”

“C'mon, Brandt, you're not that drugged. Figure it out,” Ethan said, dry and just a little fond. They had never come close to this with the fake guy, this addictive blend of sarcasm and sincerity. It was really him.

“I am on a _lot_ of drugs, Ethan, you should appreciate how incredibly high I am right now.”

“You just sincerely complimented my hands and are acting like you thought we wouldn’t come get you. I’m aware,” Ethan drawled.

“Disavowed,” he rasped. The more he tried to focus, the more he realized how much the drugs had worn him down. And they hadn’t let him sleep for...a while. “And I figured you’d be in Canada for at least a few more days.”

“Got done early,” Ethan replied vaguely, still picking away at the lock on the leg shackles. “It’s amazing how motivational negative-three-degree weather can be.”

“The climate is much warmer here,” Will rasped, sweat trickling down his spine. He probably reeked, but the one benefit of a bloody nose was the lack of smell – fair trade for the string of yo-mama jokes he’d used to avoid questions about security in Buckingham Palace. God, that had been a weird assignment. “I think I need a throat lozenge. I talked a lot.”

"It's okay," Ethan soothed. "You were drugged, it's not your fault. We'll do a full debrief, figure out what was compromised. It'll be okay."

"Oh, that's fine. They didn't get anything yet. You have good timing."

"Yeah?" Ethan said, working at the last restraint. "How'd you manage that?"

The shackles popped open under Ethan's fingers, and Will hissed as the metal peeled away from his skin. "Yep, I'm gonna need a tetanus shot when we get back.” He exhaled against the pain, and recited: “‘These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they will speak with new tongues.’” The words were worn smooth with childhood memories and bitterness.

"Speaking in tongues, really?" Ethan said, sliding an arm around Will's back.

"Switched languages every sentence or so. Polish, Basque, Hungarian, a little Urdu–" he grunted as Ethan heaved him to his feet.

“You don't speak Urdu fluently.”

“I know. And my accent sucks. Kinda the point.”

Ethan huffed out an amused breath, so close that Will found it very hard not to lean his head down into the curve of Ethan’s neck, invisible in the darkness but vivid in his memory. Clear as a horizon, and just as unattainable.

“Don’t worry,” he said, unable to stop himself anymore. “I didn’t say anything about Croatia.”

The arm around his back tightened fractionally. Will babbled. “I knew you’d come, because you do crazy things for people you love, and you still love...her,” he choked back the name, barely. “So I knew you’d come get me, because I might say something, but it was like not thinking about the elephant in the room and thank god they were too stupid to ask the right question because I probably would have told them. I’m sorry. I said I'd keep your secrets. You shouldn’t have told me.”

“I trust you,” Ethan said quietly, after a long silence.

“But everyone knows you’re crazy,” Will said, helplessly. God, he just wanted to shut up now, but he couldn’t remember the Urdu for crazy and Ethan shared most of his other languages.

“Brandt....” Ethan started, and sighed. “Will. I–”

A distant explosion interrupted him and a crack split the earthen wall, letting a stream of light into the room. Will winced away from the brightness; in his peripheral vision, he saw Ethan clench his jaw. 

“How much of that blood is yours?” he said, in a dangerous tone.

“Lots,” Will said honestly. “The nosebleed was most of it. Some cracked ribs. They caned one of my feet. Wish I’d been wearing Jane’s shoes; I’ll have to talk to Benji about that.”

“Can you walk?” Ethan asked curtly.

“Course I can,” Will said, shifting his weight to his injured foot to show Ethan – and gasped at the spike of pain, collapsing. 

Ethan caught him by the hip and shoulder – avoiding the ribs, thank you – and pulled one of Will’s arms over his shoulders.

“Sorry,” Will gasped, blinking his eyes to clear them. “Sorry, I’m – didn’t think it was that bad. I feel a little weird right now.”

“I’ve got you,” Ethan murmured. “Just hang on to me.” He shifted his gun to his left hand – ambidextrous, Will’s brain reminded him – and they shuffled to the door. Despite the explosion they’d heard, the halls were quiet. The men that had guarded his door were utterly silent, lying in pools of blood or unnatural heaps. Ethan helped him step painfully over several more bodies and out a heavy outer door. Will was hazily admiring the blast pattern on the steel – still smoking – when an armored SUV screeched up and Jane stuck her head out.

“First aid kit’s in the backseat, guys. Benji even remembered the extra painkillers this time.”

“I love you guys,” said Will earnestly, as Ethan corralled Will’s increasingly unsteady limbs inside the car. Benji was in the driver’s seat, and Will looked at him upside down from his position on the cushions and said, “Wow, this is like a Kodak moment. Anybody have a camera?”

“No,” Jane said, relief and amusement curling around her voice as she propped her M4 into position on the edge of the window. “Lucky you.”

“Okay,” he sighed, letting his eyes fall closed as Ethan shut the door and took up a cover fire position at the window, carefully tucking Will’s injured foot in his lap. “I’m gonna pass out now.” He blinked his eyes open again with difficulty, and added, “Um, thanks for, you know.”

“The painkillers?” Ethan suggested. His hand curled around Will’s ankle and squeezed comfortingly. “Don’t mention it.”

Apparently, there were some things he didn't know how to say, even with truth serum lingering in his veins. He said, “Yeah, okay,” and let himself fade out to the feel of Ethan’s hand on his skin, and the familiar sound of his team’s voices, calm and lethal around him, taking him somewhere safe.


	10. found my way

Will woke up with a hangover and a severe case of self-recrimination. He’d made it through days of hostile interrogation, only to say something incredibly stupid and revealing in front of Ethan. A shining example of the gap between his personal and professional skill levels. Christ.

He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples in a vain attempt to subdue the pounding throb of his headache, then pushed himself up to look at the room, wincing at the movement on his ribs. The room was dusty, with walls and floors made of wood, and the light streaming through the lone window had the golden color of – early morning? Sunset? He’d know which one soon. Everything else about the room was grey and nondescript, except for the little red-and-brown patterned pillow propping up his bad foot. Will flexed it a little – sore but mobile, and it didn’t feel too badly swollen.

There was a knock on the door and Will startled, his heart rate picking up. Oh, crap, was that Ethan? Please let it not be Ethan.

The door cracked open, and Jane stuck her head through. “Good morning!” she said, which answered that question.

“Hi, Jane,” Will said, lying back against the headboard. He closed his eyes for a moment in relief.

“Headache kicked in yet?” Jane asked sympathetically, walking over and holding out a cup. Judging by the intense smell, it was Turkish, so Will forgave the small size. Jane’s Turkish coffee could wake the dead.

“How’d you guess?” Will took the cup from her, wincing a little as the heat stung the tiny cuts and scrapes that covered his hands. Someone had carefully cleaned them while he was out, and bandaged the deepest one with a wrap around the base of his thumb.

“Headaches come standard with the post-interrogation drug hangover, in my experience,” Jane said wryly. “I’ll make you drink a few bottles of water after you’re done with the coffee. How’s the foot? Ethan didn’t think the caning broke any bones when he checked, but we won’t know until we can get it x-rayed.”

“It’s not bad,” Will said, then added, “As long as I don’t walk on it, apparently.” He ran his fingers over the bandage on his hand, wondering if Ethan had done that part, too. Then he felt like an idiot, because it was a damn medical treatment, not a romantic gesture.

“Thanks again for the rescue,” Will said. “How did Ethan talk HQ into a retrieval mission, anyway?”

Jane was silent for a second too long, and Will looked over. She grimaced at him. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Don’t tell me they tried to double me or something,” Will groaned, easing back.

“Well. No. But they did frame you for treason.” 

Will sat bolt upright, then clutched his ribs in agony. “ _Fuck_ , they did _what_?”

“We didn’t believe it, of course,” Jane said matter-of-factly. “Eventually Ethan got sick of arguing with them, so we borrowed Cinnamon’s company jet, robbed a couple of arms dealers blind, and came after you ourselves. We’re pretty sure the Syndicate’s behind the whole mess, so Luther, Declan, and Zhen are looking into that end of things with that analyst friend of yours.”

“Adam?” Will said, after a moment of confused thought. He had been too fucked up over Croatia to make many friends as chief analyst, much less one the team would know.

“Yeah, him.”

“The _Chief_ Analyst for the IMF.”

“Only the best for you.” Jane shot him a wicked grin. “Benji says hi, by the way, but he’s busy hacking the IMF server, so he might not drop by for a while.”

Will resisted the urge to bury his head under the pillows. Cotton and feathers were hardly going to be an effective barrier against his team’s overenthusiastic protective instincts. He was best off facing them head-on.

“Look, Jane, I don’t want you guys to clear me if it means getting yourselves into trouble over this.” Hacking the IMF server? If Benji was caught, it could mean decades in prison.

“It’s not like we haven’t done this sort of thing before,” Jane said dryly. “And don’t argue, Will. Even if we get disavowed or hauled off to prison, we got you back. It was worth it.”

Will looked down, fiddling with the empty coffee cup to hide the way his eyes were tearing up. Jane gently took the cup away and wrapped her hand around his.

“Besides, I think Ethan would have come on his own if we hadn’t volunteered, and you know that kind of thing only ends in explosions.”

Will gave a watery laugh. “I’m pretty sure my rescue involved a couple of explosions, anyway.”

“ _Controlled_ ones,” Jane said primly, squeezing his hand. “Now, drink this.”

True to her word, Jane made him drink a ton of water before she was satisfied. Leaving still more bottles by the bed, she left him to his thoughts. He kept himself firmly to consideration of the treason charge, which was ironically much easier to deal with than the fact that Ethan would definitely still have come alone, because Julia–

“So I think we need to clear up a few things,” Ethan said from just inside the doorway.

Will kept himself from startling only out of sheer habit – then tamped down his panic, also on reflex. “Sure, what’s up? Did Benji find more intel?” Will asked, trying to casually straighten as best he could with his foot propped on the pillow.

“Not about that,” Ethan said, and walked over to stand by the bed.

“Then what?” Will said, feigning confusion and dreading the reply.

“What you said back there, about...Croatia.” 

Damn it. 

Ethan went on mercilessly, not giving Will time to adjust. “You need to revise your analysis, Will. You were right that I do crazy things for people I love, but Julia had nothing to do with why I came for you.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, and sighed. “Damn it, I knew I should have kissed you in Rio."

Will’s brain sputtered, then caught. He flipped from confused to stunned in a heartbeat.

“Wait, you’re saying that you–”

“Yes.”

“And you want–”

“Yes.”

“But, I thought–”

“Yeah, I got that.”

"Are you sure?" Will blurted. "You were bleeding from the head in Rio."

"If I let that sort of thing stop me, I'd never get anything done," Ethan said. "Besides, I figured it out in Siberia. I just needed a little time."

Flustered, Will said, “But…you’re straight.”

“No, I’m not.”

“And still in love with Julia.”

“Yes,” Ethan said, and Will’s heart sank. “And Nyah, and Claire. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll have to add you to that list.” Will swallowed. He wasn’t sure what his face looked like, but Ethan’s expression softened a bit. “I’m not going to regret this, no matter what happens, but I will regret not trying. Let me surprise you.”

Will leaned back. Ethan looked patient and calm, but Will could see lines of tension around his eyes. “You always surprise me, Ethan,” Will said, and watched those lines ease. He took a deep breath. “So...how would this work? We’re more likely to be halfway around the world from each other than out at the movies on a Friday night.”

Ethan dropped his hand beside Will’s. He traced a finger thoughtfully over the bandage on Will’s palm. “Let’s try that.”

“What?”

“A date. Friday night. Wherever we are in the world, we’ll make it happen.” Ethan smirked at him, and Will tried not to find it so damn attractive. “I’m sure we can think of something, between our skill sets.”

Will’s thoughts skittered around at lightning speed, but that whisper of instinct, the one that kept him from overthinking things and freezing in the field, came to his rescue once again. He could play out the risks and worry about the details until the end of the world, but this was worth it. Whatever this turned out to be, it was worth it. 

Will turned his palm over, and folded their hands together.

“Okay,” Will said. “Next Friday.”

“Okay?” Ethan repeated. He was starting to smile.

“You’re on for Friday,” Will confirmed, grinning. He waited a beat. “But that can be our second date. Our first date is taking down this asshole framing me for treason.”

“I can work with that,” Ethan said, smiling irrepressibly.

Will added, “Also, I don’t put out until after the third date,” just to see how Ethan would react.

Ethan’s grin broadened. “I can be very persuasive.”

Will laughed. “We’re gonna be a little busy clearing my name, Ethan. When are you going to have time?”

“I’ll just have to get a head start on the clock,” Ethan said, and leaned in to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> We would like to express our thanks:
> 
> \- To _The Man From U.N.C.L.E._ , for actually having attack cheetahs (1.06 "The Green Opal Affair") (no, really)  
> \- To ohvienna for the vid [Sabotage](http://sync-slaying.livejournal.com/34805.html) and talitha78 for the vid [We Run The Night](http://talitha78.livejournal.com/277122.html), both of which we watched many times over when we needed a boost to get re-engaged with the movies.  
> \- To Barbara Bain, for being fabulous at any and all ages.  
> \- To Dean Martin's song lyrics, for providing the main title and all chapter titles (from "Sway", "Just In Time", "You Hit The Spot", "Ain't That a Kick In the Head", and "Houston")  
> \- To the special features on the first movie DVD, which gave us some great fodder from the agent profiles  
> \- To the original M:I TV series episode "Operation Rogosh" (1.03) in which they actually do pull off a memory loss con in Los Angeles.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [ART - Thrill As Only We Know How](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1387153) by [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan)




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